Hell is for Heroes

Rating: Null/10 (16 December 2009)

"It's a video game of a movie. In some ways, The Hurt Locker is a 21st century "Triumph of the Will." – Marilyn Young (historian)
There has been a spate of Iraq-war themed films recently ("In the Valley of Ellah", "Redacted", "Rendition", "Lions To Lambs", "Battle for Haditha" etc), most of which have been either shunned by audiences or mauled by critics. Of these films, "The Hurt Locker" seems to be the one have to hit the right notes with both groups.
Revolving around a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, the film is constructed around 6 Hitchcockian sequences. We watch as our heroes cruise from one set piece to the next, racing against time as they attempt to diffuse a series of bombs. Will the bomb explode? Will they die? Will they cut the red wire in time? These are the questions the film asks.
Like most war movies, the film's sole aim is thus to titillate. To string together a series of action sequences where the survival of our heroes is the audience's only concern. The film's lead trooper – a self-destructive maverick reminiscent of Mel Gibson character in the "Lethal Weapon" series – is himself the kind of unfeeling hero common in cop movies. He navigates the hellhole of Iraq, without any care in the world. He's surrounded by scum, but he loves his job. It's the only thing that gives him a buzz.
Macho-director Kathryn Bigelow specialises in these kind of films. Her previous flicks – "Near Dark", "Blue Steel", "Strange Days", "K-19", "Point Break" etc – all deal with adrenaline junkies in one form or another. She sees herself as a rare breed: a woman who makes subversive high-voltage action movies. But having Patrick Swayze wax poetic about peace and Buddhism after he violently robs a bank in "Point Break" isn't subversive or illuminating. It's just hypocritical.
"The Hurt Locker" functions on the same level. In a Kubrickian move, the film acknowledges the seduction of violence, the words "War is a drug" stencilled in big white letters immediately after the title credits fade. Bigelow deftly fuses references to pornography, homo-eroticism and the phallus, with moments of nail-biting violence. The message is clear: war is sexy. Men love it. It tastes good. Feel the tension. Isn't it addictive?
But war is not sexy – technology (and by extension, cinema) is. A formation of fighter jets is beautiful in much the same way a formation of birds is beautiful. There is elegance in design, beauty in the sleekness of weapons and the phallic curves of bombs and guns. But war itself isn't sexy. Corpses, mutilated children, bullet ridden bodies, blood and guts and psychological trauma...these aren't sexy.
Bigelow acknowledges that violence always has a sexual underside, but then pushes the violence away in favour for sexy action scenes. It's like "Requiem of a Dream" with the highs and no lows. It's like fetishizing a gun being fired and then avoiding the corpse it results in.
7/10 – "The Hurt Locker" is eerily similar to Don Siegel's "Hell is For Heroes" and P. Leacock's "The War Lover", two other films about alienated war-junkie whose addiction to violence pushes them over the edge. There are also numerous similarities to Aldrich's "Ten Seconds To Hell", also about a bomb squad.
(Many have praised the film for not having any political motive, but this isn't true. The film is uninterested in why the US forces are in Iraq disarming bombs, ignores the fact that, in the larger historical context, they are the ones who are dropping all the bombs, and is content to portray the Iraqis as MacGuffins who exist solely to make bombs. Disavowal is politics at its most pure. Isn't it disturbing that, after six years of ignored Iraq War movies, this kind of flick is ultimately what resonates with critics and audiences?)
Worth one viewing.