REVIEW: ‘The Hurt Locker’
Director Kathryn Bigelow hasn’t just made a definitive movie about war in Iraq; with “The Hurt Locker,” she has made a statement about what non-conventional warfare means in the 21st Century, and the toll it takes on its participants.
Bigelow immerses viewers in the wartime environment immediately, and subtly. The color palette is washed out, and there’s nothing muted while outdoors. It’s harsh sunlight and dusty, wasted terrain. Improvised Explosive Devices are everywhere, and endangering the Iraqi citizens and the coalition forces fighting against the insurgents alike.
While most war movies focus on combat and preparation, “The Hurt Locker” shows the Iraq war through the gaze of a bomb disposal unit. Working from a script by journalist Mark Boal, who followed bomb-disposal technicians around in Iraq, “The Hurt Locker” follows Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), an uncannily successful bomb defuser. Of course, success in this field is simple: don’t die. James is attached to a new disposal crew (Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty), and immediately rubs them the wrong way due to his “erratic” behavior.
James seems hardwired to disarm bombs, and ignores all other factors while doing so. His team is responsible for keeping James safe while working on those bombs, but James all too frequently ignores their warnings – and everything else – when performing his craft. There’s no “Lethal Weapon” logic here: it’s not a matter of “should I cut the red wire, or the blue one?” but more simply, “I have to suss out how this thing was made or I will die.”
Everything in the landscape is a potential threat: the cars parked in a State Department parking lot; the children playing soccer and selling bootleg DVDs to soldiers; the man watching your progress from a storefront across the street. Anything that is a part of the landscape could cause your death. In conversations with many soldiers who have returned from Iraq, this simple axiom is the most truthful thing that could be said about fighting in Iraq, and Bigelow and Boal have conveyed it in a way that is subtle and transcendent.
Kathryn Bigelow is a singular talent in Hollywood, and works far too infrequently. She’s gone from stylistic juggernauts like “Near Dark,” “Point Break” and “Strange Days” to the occasional TV episode. She won the Texas Star Award at this year’s AFI Dallas Film Festival, and “The Hurt Locker” proves why it was so well deserved. Where others would have chosen to pound home a message about the politics of war in Iraq, Bigelow uses a gripping narrative to show what the conflict in Iraq is like on the ground-level. By personalizing the war, she makes it that much more palpable.
“The Hurt Locker” is a master work on all fronts: Jeremy Renner deserves to be on the short list for Best Actor nods come Oscar time, plain and simple; Anthony Mackie (who was excellent in “We Are Marshall”) is sensational; the production design (turning Jordan into the bombed-out streets of Baghdad) is top-notch; the sound design makes you feel every explosion in your very core. Mark Boal, in his first script (he wrote the story for “In The Valley Of Elah”), has hit one out of the park.
In the same way “Platoon” told the story definitively of being a soldier in Vietnam, “The Hurt Locker” sets the standard for telling the story of serving in Iraq. It is a masterpiece, and should be treated as such.
