We don't need another hero

Rating: 10/10 (10 July 2009)

This film rises to the level of "The Red Badge of Courage" less in aspiration than in the accumulation of detail. And those details are intricate yet laid before us effortlessly by Kathryn Bigelow. In the blink of an eye we understand the mission of this group of men, what's at risk and the chaos whirling around them. And within 10 minutes the key character enters, and Jeremy Renner grabs the audience by the throat as effortlessly as Bigelow. Renner plays a hot dog who is so hooked on the adrenalin of war, his performance pushes each harrowing sequence by squeezing the audience to one of the most agonizingly suspenseful films of the last decade.
And while the kinetic energy of the film is marked, it's not the film's purpose. Bigelow has bigger fish to fry, and they're not either political nor pacifist. This isn't—by a long shot—an anti-war film. But it even rises above, I think, the director's intentions. War turns out not to even be for the victors. It destroys those on both sides. It kills everything but one: the need to survive and even that is put on the table for debate. Over and over, this small group of men (three superb actors) are called to defuse some type of explosive. We barely see "the enemy." We see their weapons which lie in wait for whoever happens to be near when they detonate. It's like something out of Kafka. And we watch these men brought near mental, physical and spiritual breakdown, only to get up and do the same thing again.
The dialog flows so naturally, that while we may have never even heard most of the vocabulary here yet we immediately understand what's going on. Visually, I can't remember a film that is both beautiful, a mise-en-scène that is so complete, beautifully composed but never is either self-conscious or without purpose. Midway, there's an extended sequence with three British soldiers that could be used to teach a master class in film schools: We're thrust into an unknown landscape (as the characters are) and what develops is told with such clarity, it's as if we've been given a map prior to seeing the film.
Since this is fiction, I did worry that some plot device would become too clever, and while that doesn't happen, the end of the film doesn't add to what we've learned long before the conclusion. It wasn't a let down, but I felt the film had achieved its point so successfully, that the director was unaware she had achieved her goal long before the final sequences.
Shot in Jordan, the Middle East looks like Mars. Everything is so alien and no one can communicate with one another because of language barriers. While this isn't any particular political point about our involvement in Iraq, it does point out the grave differences that can exist on two sides of a conflict and how misunderstandings—casual and significant—can perpetuate violence and hatred.
Special mention should be made of the soundtrack, which is very close to the one used in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." It adds an unnerving edge that jibes perfectly with documentary look of the film, combining brilliantly with the sounds of war.