Nerve Shredder But Not A Tear Shedder

Rating: 8/10 (21 November 2018)

Tense and scenario-driven, it's a collection of war stories with loose threads laid between them, much like a military-themed game that pays little attention to the quiet time between set pieces. It's superbly suspenseful; I think that each day in Bravo's rotation builds on the last in satisfying ways, further straining the EOD squad in new ways. I wouldn't call it realistic per se, as the story takes a couple fantasy turns (though not entirely out of the realm of possibility) in the interest of raising the stakes, but there never really seem to be meaningful consequences that follow. None of these guys ever really face condemnation from anyone but each other, and whether or not that's a comment on the lawlessness of foreign military outposts is unclear.
I think it also falters in its emotional beats, as it's presenting a war psychology 101 viewpoint on its impact on the soldier, stating its conclusion before the movie even starts, almost undercutting anything that happens in the next two hours. It's a very enjoyable two hours, but Jeremy Renner's character is an enigma that's already solved. I don't know what I would have preferred in these minimal scenes of downtime, but none of them made me scoff and go, "War is hell", because, well, duh.
Bigelow's camerawork is the secret star of the show here, the same style she would go on to use in the equally-intense Detroit. It's all a bit shaky for my taste, but it excels in the meat of this movie. It sells the paranoia and confusion the characters experience in middle of these city squares, as a silent chorus of onlookers watch the before, perhaps expecting the after, as if they're protected by an impervious sheet of plexiglass. At times it almost feels like a horror movie, and every second that goes by without any new information takes a visible toll on the squad, put in a near-impossible position of battling an unseen (or seen?) enemy.