Very Real, Very Good

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2010)

Today there is only a short list of films about the war in Iraq, but ten years from now The Hurt Locker will surely be considered one of the best. After searching for the movie in theaters all summer with no success, I jumped on the opportunity to view it on DVD. After two viewings, I remain very impressed. The film is very good and very real.
The Hurt Locker is the story of a US Army bomb squad during their final month of rotation in 2004 Bagdad. When their leader is killed in an explosion, the three-man squad receives a replacement, SSgt. William James (Jeremy Renner). With over 800 bomb disposals under his belt, he is very good at his job. He's also reckless and too much of a thrill seeker for his own good. Of course, this is a problem for his teammates, who only want to get the job done and go home. If the film claims that "war is a drug," then SSgt. James is certainly addicted. Pay attention to that claim, because all the elements of drug addiction are here: the high, the low, the overdose, the pain of sobriety, and the eventual relapse.
The Hurt Locker, while fictional, was inspired by the accounts of Mark Boal, a journalist who traveled with an American bomb squad in Iraq. Kathryn Bigelow proves that there is a woman alive who can direct some great action (something I seriously doubted after Aeon Flux and Punisher: War Zone). Her direction has style but is also very realistic. I cannot recall a single shot or line of dialogue that seemed overly dramatic or too Hollywood-esquire. I only counted two uses of slow motion in the whole film. One of which, the slow fall of an empty shell from a rifle, is particularly effective. The shell's long and slow bounce on a rock is appropriately followed by the long and tedious wait for enemy movement on the horizon. This is perhaps the best scene in the film.
The tension created by the bomb disposal scenes is real and certainly never forced. Where most filmmakers would have focused on the countdown of a clock, or attempted to create suspense with an overpowering soundtrack, Bigelow takes a different approach. When James is disarming a bomb, we hear little except for the whistling of the wind, or the crunch of gravel and sand. We aren't at the mercy of a timer or countdown, but of the bomb maker, who could be any of those suspicious onlookers standing in the distance.
The most refreshing thing for me was to see a war film (and such a modern war film for that matter) that wasn't weighed down with pro-war or anti-war messages. The Hurt Locker is a film about soldiers in Iraq, not the politics behind them.
PS – The one problem I had with this film was the unforgivably short screen time given to Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pierce (although this may be a trend for the latter considering The Road). Other than that, a solid 9/10.