Threats of explosions of both an IED and male ego nature, as Bigelow's Hurt Locker thrills and engages.

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2010)

If only more American filmmakers had the lust to take on the sort of material contained within The Hurt Locker and execute it in a manner that is as good as the manner in which it's done so here. If only the lust to do so was as powerful and soul shatteringly affecting as the whole idea of warfare is to a certain character within this film. The Hurt Locker is an agonising pressure cooker of a film experience, an exploration of the male ego in a number of volatile scenarios based within the overall volatile situation that is the Iraq war; here is a film that systematically documents not only what it's like for one man to face his difficulties of just having to be close to the action and on tenterhooks in what he does the whole time, but the overall face of what the Western troops are going through in their darting from one situation to another in a place full of people you really feel don't want them there. As a film exploring the relationship these troops have with their task at hand, it is gripping; as a film exploring the relationship the troops have with one another, it is fascinating and as a war genre piece encompassing action, suspense and satisfying enough arcs for its characters, it is so very watchable.
The act that The Hurt Locker revolves around is the disarming of bombs; something that goes rather wrong in the opening scene, a plunging of the audience into the front line of bomb disposal in a sandy, dusty Iraqi street as American soldiers do their best to keep cool in likening the disarming process to a sex act; garnering a permission to panic when some of the tools used for the process break down. The precise nature of the task at hand is very quickly established, clutching at a very visceral and exposed sense of dread instilled within the audience and while we are in the company of professionals. Director Bigelow manages to maintain a steady sense of clammy threat as these severely explosive items linger in such close proximity to the characters we come to care for.
The tragedy that befalls the team in the opening paves the way for a certain Staff Sergeant by the name of William James (Renner) to enter the fray, a man that clashes with the chief of the small platoon of soldiers they have operating in the area, a certain Sergeant Sanborn (Mackie), in their attitudes and ideas to the hostile situations omnipresent in the war-zone they're in. Bigelow creates a dry, formidable locale in Jordan; a stunt double for Iraq. Jets soar overhead, a premature explosion of noise as one approaches an explosive item; the streets are littered with items and junk making it impossible to pick apart what is just trash and what might be the thing that takes both your legs; the locals stand and sit, calmly, from elevated positions – often shot so as to appear to be staring right into the camera: at us. These people watch the ensuing activity in the bomb disposal with a baited sense of urgency, antagonism and a somewhat perverse sense of glee. In a lesser, more action orientated and exploitative war film about how titillating the action can actually be, the on-looking; ill-minded target audience for said piece would possess all the characteristics the balcony and window dwelling locals do so in The Hurt Locker – only this time, it is us on that frontline having the onlookers gazing at us.
Bigelow's able to do that; that ability to shift tension and threat away from something that might go off and end a character's life there and then in order to focus on something all around the other troops, several hundred feet away, watching on intently and in doing so, manifesting an odd sensation as to whom is in greater danger. We get the feeling we're in that dusty, desert infused zone of hostility; when a gunfight breaks out at around the midway point of the film, itself a stretch of film that'll see the troops' sense of precision and patience spill out into a scenario in which the bullets are flying, the soldiers involved 'reward' themselves with juice as opposed to water, as a number of empty plastic bottles lie strewn about their area - we feel the relief in equal terms.
Bigelow casts a number of unknowns in the major roles, helping to heighten the sense of tension by way of actor anonymity. This is very humorously counter-balanced with how she treats some of the bigger name stars at her disposal, and a reunion with her lead from 1995's Strange Days in Ralph Fiennes acting as the best example. James' coming to terms that his own carefree, adrenaline fuelled attitudes to warfare are a threat to others, masterfully woven in when an unneeded spur-of-the-moment hunt for a bomber in the general area of a recent urban blast is a result of his own romping, stomping attitude that puts others not so cocksure at risk. Any apparent parallel between James' actions, attitudes and ideologies with recent world leaders are welcome, but ill-advised.
Bigelow's statement on how much she just loves to study these men doing what they do together arrives in the scene James and Sanborn engage in a play fight-come-square off in the barracks after alcohol consumption. After talking of their past failures with women, the two (with James shirtless) engage in a sexually charged sequence of oneupmanship that goes to a level one of them doesn't want it to reach. But that's the way it is; James is lost amidst house-set roof repair and aisles of different cereal brands in an American store, but at home holding a stray Arab cabbie at gunpoint as he ventures off to defuse another metallic globe of destruction. The film is a thrilling, relentless and powerful exploration of what it takes on.