Gripping but not quite what I expected

Rating: 8/10 (21 April 2010)

I suspect my hopes for this film were raised a little too much by the fact that it had recently won the Oscar against apparently strong competition; as I've yet to see the other films I can't comment on whether that win was deserved though. I did enjoy it although it wasn't quite the realistic depiction of life in a bomb disposal team I was expecting. It grabbed me from the first scene where the character I thought was being set up to be star of the film was killed in an explosion. It turned out the main character was going to be his replacement Sergeant William James; a bomb disposal expert who appears to enjoy the danger of his work a little too much. I could believe it when he was depicted as he seemed to relish his work trying to defuse various bombs but later on when he went out of his base alone and dressed in civvies looking for the person responsible for death of a local boy he had befriended seemed unbelievable as did the scene where he and the other two members of his team split up to search the alleyways near a bomb blast rather than waiting for regular infantry to arrive. Ignoring these faults the film does manage to tell an exciting story where there was a sense that anybody could die.
Kathryn Bigelow did a great job directing and I'm not surprised that she won many awards for this film, she certainly proves that you don't need to be a man to make a very macho film. The cast of mostly unknown (to me) main characters did a fine job, especially Jeremy Renner who played Sgt. James. There are a few star names to be seen but don't expect them to be on screen for long most of them only appear in one scene. While I did enjoy the film I feel it would have been better if it had stuck to looking at Sgt. James addiction to the danger of his job rather than having him seek out situations which would almost certainly not be tolerated in real life.