The Hurt Locker

Rating: 6/10 (18 November 2019)

When The Hurt Locker was released. The joke was that if you see anyone famous in this film. They will be dead within 5 minutes.
At the time no one knew Jeremy Renner or Anthony Mackie, future stalwarts of the Marvel blockbuster films.
Set in Baghdad in 2004. William James (Jeremy Renner) is the replacement leader for the army bomb disposal unit. Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) finds James to be a maverick and reckless. Both men do not get on.
James befriends a young Iraqi boy who he calls Beckham. He sells dodgy DVDs and likes to play football. James is concerned when he disappears. As the unit go about their high pressure work, they encounter civilians strapped with bombs and snipers.
Director Kathryn Bigelow became the first female to win the best director Oscar. She was in competition with her ex husband James Cameron that year who was nominated for Avatar. She made the movie like it was a drama documentary with plenty of shaky camera work. The story is episodic, these guys lives are dangerous and pressurised. Death is just around the corner. The film works better with the then unknown cast. Actors like Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes make cameo appearances. However the story in retrospect is shallow.
The Hurt Locker is the more successful of the post second Iraq invasion cycle of movies. However it is hampered by its non critical approach. In some ways this mirrors Apocalypse Now, which displayed the madness surrounding its characters but is never explicitly was critical of the Vietnam war. This was left until the mid 1980s when films like Platoon were released.
There is no debate as to whether these foreign invaders had any right to be here. This is a country in chaos with private contractors operating for money. You see Iraqi civilians at risk if they just to be happening to hold a mobile phone, stand at a rooftop. At one point a DVD market stall trader is attacked and a house of an academic is broken into because James has a suspicion.
The upshot of the film is James when he is back at home in the USA is bored of shopping at the supermarket and wants to go back to Iraq. He craves the excitement, sod the people of Iraq.