The Hurt Locker (2009)

“War is a drug” — a concept posited in the opening moments of The Hurt Locker. If that is true, then Staff Sergeant Will James (Jeremy Renner) is a junkie. He has personally defused over 800 bombs and explosives while serving with the Army in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’s the leader of a three-man Explosive Ordnance Disposal team in Baghdad in 2004, when insurgent actions against the U.S. and allied forces are increasing. And Sgt. James is right where he wants to be. He’s a professional, courageous to the point of recklessness at times, unafraid to face potential detonation head-on. That’s because he examines each explosive like a detective investigating a crime scene. He saves parts of the defused bombs like little trophies. “This guy here nearly killed me,” he says as he shows off a little switch, personifying it as a stand-in for the trigger man he foiled. He can’t get enough of this sort of action.

James’s tendency to rush headlong into danger is cause for concern from his two EOD teammates, by-the-book Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and nervous Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). Sanborn just wants to play things straight, do what they gotta do and get home safe. He’s well aware of the high risk factor with this job, and he isn’t happy at all to see James take unnecessary risks, such as going incommunicado occasionally and removing his protective gear during one precarious defusal so he can “die comfortably.”

Eldridge, a jumpy young soldier nearly paralyzed by thoughts of dying in Iraq, is often saddled with covering the other two guys while they detect, defuse, and detonate. And providing cover is not easy when you’re undermanned and surrounded by onlookers, any of whom could be about to blow everything to hell. His doubts about his future lead him to seemingly ineffective counseling from a desk-jockey colonel, and those doubts are exacerbated by the obsessive danger seeker now leading his team.

These three characters form the lean, mean, dramatic core of this remarkably intense film. Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, both of whom appeared in We Are Marshall, each get multiple chances to shine with believable performances as Sanborn and Eldridge, respectively. And Jeremy Renner, star of the recent ABC series The Unusuals and impressive in a minor role in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, wisely avoids portraying James with Rambo-like machismo. Renner plays him with honest emotion, whether he’s negotiating playfully with a street-hustling Iraqi kid, quenching the thirst of a fellow soldier during a desert battle, or breaking down while fully clothed in a shower, washing off another soldier’s blood. These relatively unknown leads are offset by several surprising cameos from more well-known actors including Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, and Lost star Evangeline Lilly.

Mark Boal’s screenplay smartly avoids political grandstanding about the Iraq war by focusing on the hows rather than the whys; there are no mentions of Saddam Hussein or WMDs or al-Qaida (apart from a reference to the famous “Most Wanted Iraqi” playing cards), nor is there any significant denigration of the American military, other than an early reference to shoddy workmanship with one of their disposal tools. Instead, we focus, from the soldier’s perspective, on what they have to do to survive each day in such a remote land and insular culture. The script does tend to veer occasionally toward stereotyped characterization and plot clichés, especially in an awkward back-home sequence that looks and feels like it was edited in from a totally different movie. Fortunately these weaknesses are kept to a minimum and balanced out by many intriguing moments of realistic emotional interaction from the three lead actors. And though the characters’ depth and background may be minimal, that is forgivable compared to the real meat of this story: depicting the sheer terror these brave military men face every day over there.

The true star of this film is director Kathryn Bigelow. Renowned for her dexterity with action in such previous works as Point Break and her neo-vampire classic Near Dark, she has pulled out all the stops here and crafted a breathtaking film of relentless intensity. Bigelow allows very few moments of relief; right after one nerve-wracking scene ends, the next one begins. A couple of these sequences are nearly excruciating in length. The tension in this movie is physically palpable and exhausting, especially with the handheld verité camera work by United 93 cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, which places the viewer right in the center of the action. Seriously, this movie had me on edge from the very first scene, so much so that I completely forgot I had purchased a large drink until the movie was almost over and I still had nearly all of it left.

Filmed in Jordan for an authentic look and feel, The Hurt Locker vividly depicts the techniques, dangers, and horrors particular to urban warfare, often reminiscent of the urban war classics Full Metal Jacket and Black Hawk Down. Though a gritty desert battle scene is suspenseful as well, the film really excels at illustrating the fearful situations soldiers face when a sniper can lurk behind any window, when an explosion can rain down concrete as well as shrapnel, when a phone or a video camera may be a lethal hazard, or when an innocent man or child can be forced to actually become a bomb himself. Regardless of how one feels about the American military presence in Iraq, there are a lot of brave men and women over there, and The Hurt Locker honors them all with a respectful, visceral depiction. It’s quite a rush.