One thing and one thing only

Rating: Null/10 (7 March 2010)

Last night, the night before the big event of Hollywood, I finally had the chance to watch Kathryn Bigelow's very acclaimed film, The Hurt Locker. It was my introduction to the work of "king of the world's" ex wife (a bit about the Oscars: I only watched half of the 10 Best Picture nominees, Up, Inglourious Basterds, Avatar, District 9 and The Hurt Locker. My personal favourite is "Basterds", District 9 after but very close both The Hurt Locker and Up all of these are truly great films to enjoy more than a single time, but I'll bet that my least favourite of those 5, certainly the extremely overrated Avatar, will give the "king of the world" another reason to think he is the greatest human being alive). I'm mentioning this because I was quite surprised, after watching The Hurt Locker certainly, to find out that Bigelow also directed a film like the 1991 Point Break. I mean, I have yet to watch Point Break (by the way, can't wait to check out Strange Days) but based on what I've heard, I imagine that it is just a great example of a dumb action movie for the male teens (maybe the only reason why I would watch it, aside of to watch another Bigelow film, is because the Chili Peppers, or at least Anthony Kiedis, appear in it!). The tagline of Point Break is "100% Pure Adrenaline", pretty much perfect tagline for a Die Hard sort of rip-off (again, I'm just guessing based on what I've heard). The Hurt Locker is a film dealing with the adrenaline (the quote that opens the film: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug") subject however it is not a film that should be targeted as a "100% Pure Adrenaline" adventure, it's a little too clever and fascinating for that this is, simply, a very tense film.
Because of that fact I think many will find here a slow film. The Hurt Locker doesn't have much of a plot: we have our setting: 30 or so days before the change of the rotation, the EOD unit that we will follow loses one of its members. Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) is the replacement and quickly he makes us think in the quote that opens the film. Essentially we just watch the EOD working, hence I say the film doesn't have much of a plot, however each work of the EOD is like an universe with many emotions present, with tension, each time we see these guys (James joined Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge) we just can't be calm and we just can't get our eyes away of the screen.