Engrossing & Brilliant! But the Title was AWFUL.

Rating: 9/10 (15 August 2015)

I am not going to list the entire cast and crew in this review since anyone can easily find that online. However, I am going to tell you that this film is one of the best I've seen in some time. It IS, as the summary line says, "Engrossing & Brilliant!" I found this movie by accident! I was staring at the Netflix main page and went to click on an ad, but a split second before I did, the ad changed to reveal a new ad which happened to be for this movie. I was bored, so I decided to watch it. I never even heard of this movie before! Now I am sitting here raving about definitely one of the best movies I've seen during my 52 years on this planet! Kathryn Ann Bigelow did an amazing job with this multi-award winning film. Bigelow also directed Point Break, a decent movie about the FBI infiltrating a surfer gang's turf to investigate bank robberies. She also directed a few other films that I never heard of. But she was spot-on in Hurt Locker which is not only captivating, but also provided an interesting view on human behavior. The Iraq war does not seem to be her topic here; the movie is not political. The acting, especially from Anthony Mackie who played Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Brian Geraghty (Specialist Owen Eldridge,) is top-notch. The main protagonist, Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), a battle-tested, adrenaline junkie veteran, arrives as a new team leader of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit in the Iraq War replacing Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson who was KIA. It isn't Renner who makes this film a winner---it's the interactions between the actors that help make this exceptional. SPOILER AHEAD! The last 10-15 minutes that includes Renner back home after his tour, shows him alone in a safe yet mundane super-market's cereal/breakfast aisle. It's almost poetic how this is a great contrast as in polar opposites of experiences in his life, that really shows how deeply addicted to his EOD work.
What I really feel hurt this movie was the title. To the average person, what the heck does "The Hurt Locker" mean? I would never have guessed what this movie was about just from the horrible title.
Regardless, PLEASE watch this; MOST won't regret it.