Better than another hand wringing about Iraq

Rating: 8/10 (26 July 2012)

The Hurt Locker was hyped as a rare example of a film about the war in Iraq that doesn't preach. Kathryn Bigelow, director of 1991's Point Break, crafts a nerve racking thriller that speaks about the reality of conflict in a way most documentaries only strive to. The Hurt Locker stands as a haunting critique of American society both at home and abroad.
This is not writer Mark Boal's first attempt at writing a film set in Iraq, where he was an embedded journalist for Rolling Stone, he previously penned "In the Wallet of Elah" (2007), but in this outing his story follows an American bomb disposal unit combing the streets of Baghdad circa 2004.
After a failed disposal resulting in one death, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) arrives on the scene. James is a wild card, a daredevil who runs to sites of maximum danger, not only disregarding the advice of his comrades, but chucking away the handsets designed to let him hear their concerns about his actions. It's then understandable that members of his team, Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) treat him with the same sort of suspicion they reserve for every inch of the debris-littered alleys and public squares they are meant to be looking after. Sanborn, reinforcing that race and class are relevant issues even for a squad unified by shared objectives, calls him a "red-neck piece of trailer trash" and knocks him unconscious. Sanborn and Eldridge even contemplate killing James, but over time they develop grudging respect for his unconventional style. When they discover him keeping old bombs under his bed as trophies, it's clear that he is an addict hooked on war.
Kathryn Bigelow shows a laser like perception into the dynamics of male bonding. The scenes in which the men get drunk and start wrestling show a deep understanding of the intense bond between men who fight together. When James forces liquid into Sanborn, who has been lying in the desert for hours watching an enemy, he does so with a delicacy that seems to confirm a love that only men who have risked their lives together on a front line can truly appreciate.
The Hurt Locker excels at making us feel that we are stranded alone with the bomb squad in a landscape full of infinite dangers. Our cinematographer Barry Ackroyd makes masterful use of grainy hand-held photography that recalls the jittery man on the spot style of YouTube. It also conveys the nervousness and paranoia the soldiers feel when every passing person could be an insurgent-in-waiting.
The Hurt Locker has gained criticized not being political enough. This movie isn't so much about Iraq as it is about war more generally. Perhaps the true subject isn't even war, but about addiction to violence and danger, signs generally found in warriors.
In my opinion the world doesn't need another film telling us how awful Iraq is. The film does comment on this particular war using a B story about James's fondness for an Iraqi boy and this relationship is handled with brilliant care. The heart of this tale lies in its powerful dramatization of ageless emotions: fear and loneliness.