A suspenseful movie about the addiction to war.

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2010)

Hurt Locker opens with the quote 'The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.' This sentence is the very essence of what this film is about.
Expert bomb disposal unit Bravo Company a month and a half left in their rotation in Iraq, a job of almost unimaginable danger. The unit must enter the very heart of war-torn cities and risk their lives to disable bombs placed by insurgents. It almost beggars belief that people really have this job, I'll steal directly from the film itself here but it can be perfectly summed up as 'every day is a roll of dice with death'. Who knows when the bomb will blow, a sniper could be lurking in any one of the decrepit buildings. How can anyone last more than a day in this job?
SSgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) is the man responsible for walking up to the bomb itself and disarming it. He is wreckless and hopelessly addicted to adrenaline rush his job provides, seemingly going out of his way to make situations more dangerous than they need to be. It's a top performance from Renner, he doesn't have to deliver any challenging dialogue, it's more a case of the audience needing to believe the character they are seeing. A guy addicted to blowing up bombs? Yeah right. But Renners portrayal makes you believe there are people like him in the real world.
Sgt. JT Sanborn and Spc. Own Eldrige are the two other members of Bravo Company. They provide the cover, identifying dangers other than the bomb and advising James on what to do (not that he ever listens during the film). Their characters are more grounded in a reality we can comprehend, especially Eldrige who seems to be the one who completely recognises the danger of his job. He is the opposite to James, fearful of every mission and counting down the days till he can leave.
The film is shot wonderfully, giving the subject matter you know what to expect. It's gritty, raw and almost unbearably tense at times. The first bomb we see Bravo Company tackle sets the tone, every person in view could be the man who put it there, it could detonate at any moment, and the suspense crescendos until it literally explodes. There is also a superb sniper encounter halfway through the film which is probably my favourite of the movie, it's a simple set up of two guys facing each other and firing in single shots separated by an almost insurmountable amount of time, you see the smoke as the gun fires and then the half a second wait before knowing if the bullet has missed you or killed you.
I'll stop running through the scenes now, because almost all of them are great. I'll just say I'm very happy I watched this film, when it comes to war movies the bar is set very high but somehow they rarely disappoint. Maybe it's the subject matter, being such a serious concept it makes sense that it shouldn't be taken on unless it can be done right.
7.5/10