War IS a drug and The Hurt Locker has gotten me addicted.

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2015)

Personal enjoyment: 5 Films Content: 5 The Hurt Locker follows a company of soldiers as they complete the last month of their tour in 2004, war torn Iraq. These brave men don't just work in the hostile terrain, they work at ground zero disarming IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) with the use of bomb suits, bots and blowing s#$% up.
The film is unlike any other war film to date. Thanks to the master full independent direction of Kathryn Bigelow, the amazing screenplay from Mark Boal, and the impressive cinematography from Barry Ackroyd, the film puts us right in the middle of an authentic looking battlefield where anything can happen. Every shot tells a story and shows a different perspective, in fact, the whole film revolves around perspective and emotion.
The Hurt Locker's main protagonist William James, (Played by the talented Jeremy Renner) is the lead bomb tech in his unit. Renner does a wonderful job of bringing a maverick sense of ego, recklessness, and emotion that he doesn't slap you in the face with. His attitude toward combat is very different from his fellow soldiers, Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (The very real Anthony Mackle) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Emotional Brian Geraghty) who are both going through their own troubles in the desert. Although the Sergeant James is the main character, Bigelow and Boal don't undermine the importance of the other actors. We see as much of them as we have to, to understand their characters and where they stand. While Eldridge is shake by the death of their previous bomb tech and is fighting to redeem himself, Sanborn shows his seriousness for the job is caused by fear and worry for what he will leave behind. Now what can be said about William? The final scene shows us that he'd rather risk his life in the sand then pick out cereal for his son and wife at home.
Something that Hurt Locker does that not a lot of war films do is it gives us a look at the lives of the Iraqi people and their interactions with the soldiers. We aren't given a propaganda piece where they are the enemy and we are the heroes, instead we see them as the observers that are curious at what is going on in their city. From the vendors in the camp to the little boy Beckham, we see the lives of these natives affected in different ways.
The use of sound in Hurt Locker is expertly done as well, building up tension when it has to and making us (or just me) cry when we need to. For the first scene we are given the best examples of what sounds the film will be giving us and what sounds we will be making (for the most part), heavy breathing, sand, light comic relief, yelling, cursing, explosions, and probably the best sound the film uses, Silence. When you combine these great sounds and the expert level cinematography you get a truly amazing piece of cinema. The best example of the camera and sound in sync is when the team breaches a building that hasn't been searched by security. As we go deeper into the building the music begins to build and build and we see, in very thorough detail, the teamwork of the soldiers and the teamwork of the film crew until everything is released. Is there a doctor in the house? This isn't the only occurrence of great filming in the movie but it is the most notable. The only thing that beats it out is when we go home with Sargent James and we see how much we really just want to go back and start the whole thing over again.
The biggest thing The Hurt Locker achieves however is not its impressive war setting or its use of suspense throughout the film or its camera and sound use, it's its real look on how deal with certain situations given to them. We see every time the team works a job how they handle the situation and how it affects them later. When Will fights to remove the locks off a non-voluntary suicide bomber, when Sanborn questions killing Will, when Eldridge speaks to his therapist about his fallen partner, they all go through hard times and they all deal with them in different ways just like other people do, and that is what we never see.
There are no story book endings, no heroic acts of valor, no stupendous expositions or transformers, no bad-ass one-liners, just a team of normal soldiers doing the job that they signed up for.