"War's dirty little secret is that some men love it. I'm trying to unpack why, to look at what it means to be a hero in the context of 21st-century combat." Kathryn Bigelow

Rating: 10/10 (13 April 2012)

The Hurt Locker (2008) - was one of the best movies released in 2009 and for me the second most deserving nominee for Best Picture of the year of eight that I have seen so far. The director, Kathryn Bigelow who is known for making dazzling, dynamic, intelligent and intense action movies (The Loveless (1982), Point Break (1991), Blue Steel (1989), Strange Days (1995), K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)) feels absolutely at home in the very manly world of directing a war film. The Hurt Locker has been universally praised by the critics and many viewers since it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2008 and made a history when Bigelow won the Best Directing Oscar on March 7th, 2010 during the Oscar ceremony. Even if it had not happened, The Hurt Locker has already won its place in history as the remarkable and to the date the best film about the war in Iraq. The most accurate description of the film belongs to the critic Roger Ebert who rated The Hurt Locker the best movie of the year and one of the best of the decade: "The Hurt Locker is a great film, an intelligent film, a film shot clearly so that we know exactly who everybody is and where they are and what they're doing and why." The film does not explore why we were there and who was responsible for the war. It just places us "inside", along with three main characters, the members of a bomb squad as they go about their daily business, doing their most dangerous and unforgiving job imaginable, trying to survive the last 39 days of their rotation. The intense effect of the total immersion was achieved by Bigelow and Barry Ackroyd, the cinematographer (United 93) by using multiple S16mm cameras to capture multiple perspectives.
The Hurt Locker is based on accounts of Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who was embedded with an American bomb squad in the war in Iraq where he would go with the members 10 to 15 times a day to watch their tasks very closely. Based on his experiences, his screen play the fictional retelling of the real events He said of the film's goal that the creators wanted to show the experiences of the soldiers that we'd never see on the daily news. I believe that director and screenwriter, as well as everyone involved in the making of The Hurt Locker have achieved their goals. The result is an unforgettable film.
It is remarkable that the film's more famous actors (Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, and David Morse) only show up for a short cameo leaving Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty to carry movie on their own. All three do an amazing job. Jeremy Renner, relatively unknown becomes a real center of the film and turns a star making performance. With the face far from a typical cinema hero, he becomes a true hero of the film, the guy who by the words of his younger comrade is not good with people but a great warrior, confident, cool, good at his deadly job, always having it done. It is about him, the epigraph to the film says, war is drug for he is addicted to the rush that only combat can give him.
I found the film absolutely riveting, gripping, and intense. It is amazingly shot, the pace is perfect, and the action scenes executed masterfully. It also works as the characters study of the men at war and how the war affects them.