not outstanding but intense

Rating: 6/10 (10 October 2008)

Kathryn Bigelow's back after six years and with good results I'd say. The Hurt Locker follows the stories of three American guys/soldiers encountering a lot of dangerous situations over the last few weeks of their Iraqi mission. The movie has got an episodic structure - the viewer finally gets used to - that mainly consists of stand-alone sequences showing details of the main characters. There's no doubt that the flick has many suspenseful scenes and effectively gets the interest rarely to flag. There are also some boring nighttime missions that certainly doesn't help but on the whole the film is taut and well acted. As for that Renner delivers an excellent and other players as well (e.g. Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes and David Morse) are good.