A Stunningly Visceral Portrait of Modern Warfare

Rating: 6/10 (1 September 2009)

Director Kathryn Bigelow is best known for POINT BREAK (1991) but THE HURT LOCKER has exploded, in both a literal and figurative sense, and her star will rise on the back of it, as will those of the new, and mostly unknown, faces that star in it.
THE HURT LOCKER is a riveting, suspenseful portrait of bomb squad technicians' courage under fire. The movie begins with three members of the Army's elite Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) squad battling insurgents and one another as they search for and disarm a wave of roadside bombs on the streets of Baghdad. While there's no doubting that the protagonists try and make the city a safer place for both Iraqis and Americans alike, the film never once broaches whether Iraq would have been a better place had the Americans stayed at home.
Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) of Bravo Company are at the centre of the war. They're part of a small force specifically trained to handle the homemade bombs, or Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that are a deathly, daily threat, accounting for more than half of American deaths and countless thousands of Iraqis.
The job is a high-pressure and high-stakes assignment and the team loses its leader on what seems like a routine mission. When Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) cheerfully takes over the team, Sanborn and Eldridge are shocked by what seems like his reckless disregard for military protocol and basic safety measures. As the fiery chaos of Baghdad threatens to engulf them, the men struggle to understand and contain their mercurial new leader long enough for then to make it home alive and in one piece. They have only 38 days left before they get to head home but with each new mission James blurs the line between bravery and bravado, it seems only a matter of time before disaster strikes.
Their mission, as it's presented, is clear – protect and save – but it's anything but easy, as the margin of error is zero. The film is a thrilling and heart pounding look at the psychology of bomb technicians and the effects of risk and danger on the human psyche. THE HURT LOCKER is a fictional tale, but inspired by real events. It was written by journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who was embedded with a special bomb unit in Iraq.
With a visual and emotional intensity that makes the audience feel like it has been transported to the dizzying, 24-hour turmoil of life in the bomb squad, THE HURT LOCKER is both a gripping portrayal of the soldiers' sacrifice and heroism and a layered, probing study of the soul-numbing rigors and potent allure of the modern battlefield. That the movie is a stunningly visceral portrait of modern warfare is undeniable yet its moral ambivalence keeps it from being a truly outstanding film. It's hasn't taken the title of best war film of all time from APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) but maybe we'll have to wait for the end of the Iraqi war before anyone can make a film of such brilliance!