REVIEW: The Hurt Locker

By BY MICK LASALLE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Posted: July 31, 2009 at 4:13 a.m.

Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) and Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) are bomb disposal specialists working in Iraq in Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker.

• Print item
• E-mail
• Share
• Tweet

LITTLE ROCK — The Hurt Locker90Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, GuyPearce, Ralph Fiennes Director: Kathryn Bigelow Rating: R, for violence, strong language, disturbing images Running time: 131 minutes

Director Kathryn Bigelow's sex has always been an issue because she makes guy movies - and she makes them better than guys do. For most of her career, her superior talent has had to reveal itself through lesser material, but in The Hurt Locker, about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, Bigelow finds the perfect vehicle to show what she can do that others can't touch.

Movie

Hurt Locker

90

Rating: R

Length: 2 hours, 11 minutes

More information

Bigelow conveys the surface aspects of an action scene as well as any director working today. She can blow things up with the best of them, but she's not McG, who thinks that explosions make a movie. Bigelow is interested in the people in the midst of the trauma, and it's this quality, Bigelow's understanding of the psychological aspect of action, that sets her apart.

She uses handheld cameras in this film - not to make viewers dizzy or to instill excitement that isn't there - to create a subtle sense of being alongside the characters. Her camera doesn't shake. It breathes. It pulses. The camera becomes the viewer's eyes, not those of a spastic cameraman. Through such intuitive means, Bigelow takes an audience from the opening credits into a state of fierce attention and total empathy within about 60 seconds.

Notice how quickly Bigelow conveys the charm and humanity of Guy Pearce, a soldier called upon to neutralize a bomb in the movie's first scene. Notice also how the direction and Mark Boal's screenplay inject a workaday quality into this tense moment. Throughout Locker, the human element is central, so that whenever something happens, it feels personal.

The film presents daily life within a bomb disposal unit, showing how the men go out, day after day, identify improvised explosive devices and either deactivate them or blow them up within controlled areas. It shows the various roles that each member of the unit plays, the routine, the hierarchy and the stress involved in knowing, as you wake up each morning, that you might get blown to smithereens before lunch. But mainly The Hurt Locker concerns itself with the notion of war as addiction, how, for certain personalities, the adrenaline rush of war becomes a drug.

Jeremy Renner makes an indelible impression as Staff Sgt. James, a man of average looks, average stature, average intelligence and average aspirations who, thanks to the Iraq war, finds out that he is one amazing soldier. He thrives on fear. The more dangerous things get, the calmer and happier he gets.He loves defusing bombs and loves taking risks, sometimes because they're necessary, and sometimes for the sake of taking them - and that line isn't always clear.

He is contrasted with his two subordinates, Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), who believes in caution and established procedure, and Spc. Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), who is just a nice kid who wants to go home in one piece. Their personalities collide and combine over the course of increasingly dangerous missions. Throughout, James remains a fascinating figure, hard to pigeonhole. He gets off on the adrenaline yet thrives on it and, arguably, becomes a better soldier because of it. Locker passes no judgment. Its interest is in war as a human phenomenon.

In this way, Locker is the first Iraq war film with a postwar feeling. It's not about politics anymore, but about a war that happened and what it was like. It was, is, different. There's a battle scene, one of the film's best sequences, unlike any you'll find in a World War II or Vietnam movie. Soldiers clash, but using long-range weapons, telescopes and heat sensors. The terrors, perils and consequences are the same, and blood can still jam a weapon at the crucial moment. But the differences in technology call for differences in heroism - for calm precision and clear thinking.

Usually a war has to be over for six or seven years before a movie comes along that's a real work of art. We've had good and very good Iraq movies for several years now, but The Hurt Locker has a fullness of understanding that sets it apart. On the day of its release, this one enters the pantheon of great American war films - and puts Kathryn Bigelow into the top tier of American directors.

MovieStyle, Pages 33, 38 on 07/31/2009

Comments

To report abuse or misuse of this area please hit the "Suggest Removal" link in the comment to alert our online managers. Please read our comment policy.

Use the comment form below to begin a discussion about this content.