The Hurt Locker [Blu-ray] (2009)

"Brilliant performance by Jeremy Renner"
By Senor Zoidbergo (Washington D.C.) - See all my reviews

I wasn't familiar with director Kathryn Bigelow's work prior to watching Hurt Locker (she directed Point Break, K-19, and others), but I am now a convert. She directed a brilliant and visceral Iraq war movie, which unlike many of its peers, is also apolitical. It's not overly preachy (In the Valley of Elah or Stop Loss) or pure action (The Kingdom), but manages to strike its own ground. The scenes are gritty, shaky; thankfully the shaky cam/documentary style footage is tastefully done here. The movie was filmed on location in Jordan, lending to the film's authenticity and immersivity. The viewer can almost taste the dust in the air, and feel the stares from the unwelcoming populace. It's the first mainstream movie to highlight the work of bomb defusal technicians , and it's a thankless and extremely hazardous job. The movie is Black Hawk Down good, albeit on a more intimate level.

The movie follows three members of Bravo Company's Explosive Ordanance Disposal (EOD) squad, as they struggle to finish the last few days of their year long tour of duty. Everyone copes differently; Specialist Eldridge (Geraghty) is overwhelmed at times with the death that surrounds them, Staff Sergeant James (Renner) is addicted to the rush of battle, and Sergeant Sanborn (Mackie) supports James as best he can. James is a complex, fascinating and tragic character; he's extremely competent, yet eccentric and even reckless to the point where his teammates consider fragging him in order to make it back alive. In a thoughtful gesture, he respects the work of his adversaries and keeps all the trigger mechanisms of bombs he has defused in the past. Every engagement the soldiers experience until their departure affects them, and we see every emotional impact.

Big Hollywood names like Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, and David Morse make short, but memorable appearances. Even LOST actress Evangelline Lily has an extended cameo as James' wife. The bomb defusal scenes are nerve-wracklingly tense, and the audience sweats alongside the defusing technician. The team constantly scans for snipers, or the suspicious civilian about to make a cell phone call to trigger an IED. The movie does an excellent job of communicating the hazards of the EOD job, and one leaves with a deep appreciation of their work.

Details
Actors: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Ralph Fiennes, Evangeline Lilly
Directors: Kathryn Bigelow
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
Language: English, Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number of discs: 1
Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Summit Entertainment
 
 


Reviews
 
The making of honest action movies has become so rare that Kathryn Bigelow's magnificent The Hurt Locker was shown mostly in art cinemas rather than multiplexes. That's fine; the picture is a work of art. But it also delivers more kinetic excitement, more breath-bating suspense, more putting-you-right-there in the danger zone than all the brain-dead, visually incoherent wrecking derbies hogging mall screens. Partly it's a matter of subject. The movie focuses on an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, the guys whose more or less daily job is to disarm the homemade bombs that have accounted for most U.S. casualties in Iraq. But even more, the film's extraordinary tension derives from the precision and intelligence of Bigelow's direction. She gets every sweaty detail and tactical nuance in the close-up confrontation of man and bomb, while keeping us alert to the volatile wraparound reality of an ineluctably foreign environment--hot streets and blank-walled buildings full of onlookers, some merely curious and some hostile, perhaps thumbing a cellphone that could become a trigger. This is exemplary moviemaking. You don't need CGI, just a human eye, and the imagination to realize that, say, the sight of dust and scale popped off a derelict car by an explosion half a block away delivers more shock value than a pixelated fireball.

The setting may be Iraq in 2004, but it could just as well be Thermopylae; The Hurt Locker is no "Iraq War movie." Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal--who did time as a journalist embed with an EOD unit--align themselves with neither supporters nor opponents of the U.S. involvement. There's no politics here. War is just the job the characters in the movie do. One in particular, the supremely resourceful staff sergeant played by Jeremy Renner, is addicted to the almost nonstop adrenaline rush and the opportunity to express his esoteric, life-on-the-edge genius. The hurt locker of the title is a box he keeps under his bunk, filled with bomb parts and other signatory memorabilia of "things that could have killed me." That none of it has killed him so far is no real consolation. In this movie, you never know who's going to go and when; even high-profile talent (we won't name names here) is no guarantee. But one thing can be guaranteed, and that is that almost every sequence in the movie becomes a riveting, often fiercely enigmatic set piece. This is Kathryn Bigelow's best film since 1987's Near Dark. It could also be the best film of 2009. --Richard T. Jameson