Seeking Thrills in War

Rating: 6/10 (16 February 2010)

In The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal explore war from a new perspective, imagining it as a drug and the soldiers as adrenaline addicts seeking thrills in their dangerous missions. Mind you, I didn't get this interpretation from watching this movie. A quote kindly explains that war is a drug at the beginning of the movie. Looking back, all my problems with this movie started here. You can't really trust a filmmaker who has so little faith in his viewer that she has to spell everything out for him in the first ten seconds.
My second complaint is that this movie fails at being the character study that it presumes to be. A study presupposes an analysis. The object of study is Sergeant William James (played by Jeremy Renner), a soldier freshly arrived in Iraq, whose mission is to diffuse bombs. James is always getting himself into needless dangers. Now a character study would try to explain why this man is obsessed with risking his life, in opposition to his colleagues, who want to get out of Iraq in one piece. It'd try to get into his mind or analyze him from several perspectives. It needn't give an explanation (I don't think anyone can truthfully explain why a man would be addicted to getting into danger), but it should do more than merely give the viewer a superficial portrayal of the character.
Compare James to Lawrence of Arabia (to talk of character studies in war), the most mysterious character in the history of cinema. David Lean analyzes him from every angle possible, basking in the contradictions of his personality, only to reach at the conclusion that Lawrence will always remain an enigma. But at least he tried to understand him.
The Hurt Locker merely jumps from one scene to another. Boal's screenplay is very episodic. There is no story from A to B, like in other 2009 movies like Inglourious Basterds or Up. This is a good choice since it shows the hectic nature of James' existence in Iraq.
Renner gives a good performance. I discovered the actor in this movie and I'm sure he has a pretty good career ahead of him. He plays an everyman, with little heroism in him and a lot of familiarity; he's the sort of person you could know from school or the office. I think this quality was the most important thing he needed to capture in the performance of this man who doesn't know why he's addicted to danger.
Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty also contribute with fine performances as James' team colleagues. Mackie in particular stood out and I found myself enjoying his character a lot more than Renner's. James is a pretty unpleasant guy. How unpleasant? So unpleasant his colleagues contemplate blowing him up at one time.
There are also three short roles in the movie that deserve mention: Guy Pearce playing the Sergeant James comes to replace; Ralph Fiennes as a mercenary tracking down terrorists in the desert; and David Morse playing a Colonel fascinated with James' dumb bravery.
The Hurt Locker is a strange movie: I didn't dislike it, but I finished it thinking I hadn't watched anything great or too memorable. Perhaps it's because it lacks a traditional narrative structure, but I just don't see a lot of content in it. Otherwise it's one of the best movies released in 2009: the cinematography was pretty great, one need only compare the contrast in colors between the Iraq scenes and the scenes with Jams back at home. The editing was pretty good. I've seen people complain about the use of hand-held cameras in the movie, how everything shakes in the movie and how annoying it is, but I actually found it quite steady most of the time and noticed that the scenes took their time to develop.
I also enjoyed the use of silence in the movie. Marco Beltrami was nominated for an Oscar for his score, but it's so subtle I hardly noticed it at all. Instead most of the movie benefits from lack of music, and the silence only makes most of the scenes tenser.
Although it's not the best movie of 2009, I can see how this movie slowly made it to everyone's top lists and how it's getting all awards. Bigelow and Boal deserve a lot of praise for having tried to do something different.