REVIEW: The Hurt Locker

OK, I'll admit it, I was in love with director Katherine Bigelow back in the day. She came into my life about the time I started worshiping directors, and then Near Dark came out and I crapped my pants, cause to this day its still my favorite vampire flick by far. Then I saw her picture and I was in love. She only makes movies every 3 to 5 years, so when one comes out i get all tingly inside. This brings us to 2009's The Hurt Locker, a movie that details the everyday life of a US bomb patrol unit in Bagdad.

Shot in Jordan, the film is based on recently declassified information about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) (bomb squad) team in present day Iraq. The Hurt Locker is written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded with a bomb squad.

First off the movie is tense. The jobs these guys do is insane to say the very least. The Hurt Locker follows a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit as it works to defuse a series of improvised explosive devices (IED) in the streets of Iraq. Jeremy Renner plays the leader of the EOD team, as he contends with not only defusing bombs in the backdrop of a war, but also the psychological and emotional strain that it inflicts. As the unit deals with one explosive device after another, it confronts the unpredictable and extreme violence of a growing Iraqi insurgency. Team members struggle constantly to distinguish enemy insurgents from innocent Iraqis and to protect themselves while avoiding civilian casualties.



The mental stability that it takes to deal with this kind of pressure is one that if closely looked at is one that is probably one step closer to insanity than sanity. You can see it in all of the actor's performances. Every character is a timebomb waiting to explode like the damn bombs they have to diffuse day in day out. With only about 30 days left on their shift, two of the group played by Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty just want to do enough work to get home in 30 days. Then they get a new diffuser played by Jeremy Renner. He likes the rush of diffusing these complex bombs. He almost admires the work, and considers them art. He even keeps a box of fuses under his bed to remind of him each time he almost died. He's walking a line the other two men in his group are not really on board with. And things get a little tense not just in the field but off it as well. This is where Renner starts to lose touch with reality and himself in the process.



This is a great film, and I'd say the best of the Middle East war movies to date. Its a small film, but expertly crafted. And knowing that it was shot in Jordan in the middle of the shit makes it even more tense watching it. In fact they had a hard time getting crew people to begin with or even stay on for the whole movie it was that insane. Visually its gritty, yet fluid and never feels artsy for cool sake. It's a very grounded movie that does not preach to you about the horrors of war. It just shows you that war can be a drug like anything else in life. Some run from it, others run into it.

Great film. One of the years best by far.