A commendable film, but somehow doesn't deliver quite like everyone said

Rating: 7/10 (15 April 2011)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Seargent Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) is a soldier in Bravo Company, a unit operating on the outskirts of Baghdad, engaging in front line combat. There's a new recruit to his unit in the shape of bomb disposal expert Seargent First Class Will James (Jeremy Renner), a rawhide redneck with a reckless attitude and approach to his work that is at odds with Sanborn's more professional approach. As they go about their duty, dodging gunfire and roadside bombs, the two men engage in a tense power struggle and form an edgy friendship in the chaos and uncertainty of war that tests them to the very limit.
With troops (British and American) still operating in the Middle East, the war is always going to be a relevant subject matter for filmic content. Katherine Bigelow's very well received Iraq based action film attempts to provide a first hand perspective into events, not quite in a hand held camera sense but something very similar to it. While it's won many over and even won some awards, for me, as with many films with such praise, it was decidedly hit and miss.
While a film might be made to feel very authentic and feel very real, it can never seem to fully separate from Hollywood conventions and always feature some sort of genre cliché or feeling of being staged. That, in spite of everything, was the feel with The Hurt Locker. While it's undoubtedly very well made and seat edgedly tense in parts, for fundamentally succeeding where it set out to, it somehow fails to come off as unmissable, feeling slow and dragging as a story, along with, as I said, not really coming off as what you're seeing is happening right in front of you. It's done very Full Metal Jacket style, though lacking that film's unforgettable characters and sense of soul being lost in the heat of war. Carrying the film in the two lead roles, Renner and Mackie play off each other in their respective parts, each the Yin to the other's Yang and tough, believable characters. They have notable support in the shape of Guy Pearce, Raplh Fiennes and David Morse, all decent enough in far more minor roles.
The Hurt Locker is certainly well worth seeing, and maybe for some it will accurately bring the horror and exhilaration of war to life, but for me it couldn't quite separate itself from the conventions of Hollywood enough. ***