"This box is full of stuff that almost killed me"

Rating: 7/10 (3 March 2010)

Kathryn Bigelow's 'The Hurt Locker (2009)' plays like a modern version of 'The Wages of Fear (1953),' basically a non-stop succession of suspenseful moments. A team of American bomb-defusers (played by three little-known actors: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) go about their duties in Iraq, risking their lives at every turn. SSG William James (Renner) is a bit of an adrenaline junkie, his sincere but somewhat-reckless approach occasionally placing his unit in peril. This episodic film follows a month in the shoes of these soldiers, facing unexpected dangers at every turn. The performances are all very natural, and the unfamiliar main actors and hand-held camera-work inject some documentary-like realism into the film, though equally welcome are some well-handled supporting roles from Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse and Evangeline Lilly.
Perhaps the most refreshing element of 'The Hurt Locker' is that it isn't recognisably political or "anti-war", instead focusing on the soldiers themselves, and how they attempt to deal with the knowledge that each moment may be their last. There's a sense of fatalism about it all. War films have always emphasised how combat turns otherwise-healthy men into shellshocked introverts, but 'The Hurt Locker' suggests that the opposite may also be true: that young men may become addicted to the thrill of conflict, and willingly stride onwards towards an inevitable death. SSG James remarks to his infant son that he will eventually outgrow his jack-in-the-box, when he himself is still enthralled by the idea of mechanical devices that unexpectedly explode. War has allowed (and, indeed, encouraged) this soldier to regress to his basest instincts.