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If anyone has been close-minded enough to argue that a woman isn't capable of creating an authentic, raw and thoroughly nerve-wracking cinematic portrayal of war, he or she need only watch Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker to be convinced otherwise. During this upcoming weekend, millions of people are gonna flock to see the Transformers sequel, which I will fervently stay away from; I saw the first one and thought it was one of the loudest and annoying pieces of crap I'd ever witnessed on a big screen, and now the pundits are saying that the new movie is longer, louder and more annoying. No, thank you. Luckily, for those who want a full-on action movie, there's the alternative of The Hurt Locker, which has its dialogue-based moments, but is mostly a compilation of edge-of-your-seat action sequences that are also incredibly realistic.
War movies tend to go over the top in terms of depicting prolonged shoot-outs and explosion extravaganzas, but The Hurt Locker chooses to exhibit more restraint, with action sequences that are devoid of strident blow-ups and instead focus on the strategic approaches taken by U.S. soldiers who are working as bomb technicians in Baghdad. The meticulous way in which they handle their tasks and the trepidation they experience whenever they face a dangerous situation is presented amazingly well in the film.
The film begins with a quote by Chris Hedges, who said that "the rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." It's a fine way to begin this movie, which does a solid job at showing the range of emotions that can be experienced on the battlefield, from the sadistic euphoria of making a kill, to the remorse upon realizing what that actually means, to the profound fear that these few seconds may be your last. Though we meet several of the bomb technicians, the story centers around Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldrige (Brian Geraghty, who was also in Jarhead, so here's a guy who can actually recognize a strong script for a war movie when he reads it). One of these three guys shows a humane side when he actually sort of bonds with an Iraqi child who sells pirate DVDs, and the other two eventually comment on "how weird" it is that he developed that sort of relationship with that kid, and this is because, as we eventually note, they don't really see the Iraqis as people, but merely as pieces of the puzzle in this mission they have to be in until their term ends and they get to return to the states.
The Hurt Locker is particularly scrupulous in getting the technical details right. At one point, one of our characters finds that he can't shoot, but it's not only because of the predictably standard reason of running out of ammo, but because the gun itself is jammed as a result of being stained with the blood of a soldier who was killed, so someone suggests the "spit and rub" approach to solve the issue. All of this is clear evidence that Bigelow was incredibly resourceful in putting this project together. There's a moment in the film that is one of those sad-yet-funny things, in which the guys are shooting and one of them asks "What are we shooting at?!" and someone else responds "I don't know!". While this may seem like a cheap attempt at comedy, I think it's just the script being accurate in terms of showing us the truly chaotic and disorganized nature of shoot-outs, which in real life are certainly not as perfectly choreographed as they are in your standard Hollywood action film.
The opinion that this is the finest cinematic take on the military struggle that the U.S. faces in Iraq is hard to refute. Recent mediocre attempts such as In the Valley of Elah, The Kingdom and Stop-Loss really gave me the feeling that we probably wouldn't see a good film about this subject until a few years after it was over, which is why I was happily surprised by The Hurt Locker. Not since Jarhead has such an effective and raw depiction of the arduous life of a soldier in a Middle Eastern desert been brought to the big screen, and even though Jarhead is better, this is still a worthy addition to the elite list of good war movies. While the film eschews some of the space it had for character development to give more room to its action sequences, those action sequences are so deeply entrancing and eerily authentic that they make the film very much worth seeing.
6/10
