The Hurt Locker (2008)Written by: Mark Boal
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Rating: 6/7
Fitting that my inaugural post should be a film review.
Now I haven't seen some of the other entrants in the fledging war sub-genre that is Iraq war films (I think of "Stop/Loss" & "Redacted") but I can tell you that "The Hurt Locker" goes a long way to establishing and solidifying the touchstones of this new topic base. Kathryn Bigelow has done war movies a great service by creating this (dare I say it, and sound like a real mass-media reviewer? Yes, I dare...) taut and suspense laden thriller.
You won't find any synopsis in my reviews. Go see the movie your damned selves. What you will find is a thoughtful critiquing of the use of filmmaking techniques and evaluation of entertainment value, and "THL" pulls off both aspects very well. Bigelow & Boal deliver a late season actioner in the dead heat of summer. Just when I needed something worth thinking about between "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" and "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" it delivers in spades. (or Jacks of Clubs, if you catch that drop.) Whereas most WWII era movies are epics, whether directed by Attenborough, Dwan or Spielberg, Korean war movies are practically non-existent (apologies to M*A*S*H* & Altman of course) and Vietnam era movies are brooding comments on morality and its relation to humanity ("Apocalypse Now", "Platoon" & the magnificent "Tigerland") "THL" foregoes any examination of the politics/morality of the war it is set in, and instead focuses entirely on the humanity of its characters. Jeremy Renner is surprisingly subtle in his portrayal of the typical 'wild man' war protagonist, the kind who plays by his own rules and seems to have missed the whole 'following procedure' part of basic training. Not to worry though, with Anthony Mackie playing by the book and Brian Geraghty awaiting death at every edit there's plenty of of mortal angst to go around.
The movie could have been just another tale of the 'loose canon makes good' story we've seen so many times before, but the script and the director never let the old stereotypes take hold of their masterpiece. With the opening scene showing us just how it easy it is to do everything right and by the book, and still end up as a stain on the inside of your visor, its easy to buy into Renner's character's haphazard and casual approach to dealing with unexploded artillery shells. Progression through the film does show however, that such a cavalier attitude toward process and regulation (a requirement in any branch of the military) usually does end up getting someone hurt, and as usual it isn't the person who's fault it was in the first place. When James takes his team on a scouting mission for unidentified (and probably non-existent) triggermen behind a terrible attack and one of the ultimately ends up a casualty, the flaw in James heroism is painfully evident. The strength of this film is that it does not idolize the 'wild man' approach to EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal), it merely presents the possible consequences of the decisions made by someone who loves their job a little too much.
And love his job James does. So much so that it is his pursuit of this love that creates his characters flaws (and I LOVE flawed characters). While Geraghty's Specialist Eldridge is happy to be far out of the firing line when possible and Mackie's Sanborn is definitely a soldier first and EOD tech second, Renner (both character and performance) revel in the art of denying the reality of high explosives. It's an almost uncontrollable love that pains James to such a powerful degree. Following what he loves tends to get others hurt or killed. Just when you thought was were no new ways to depict a characters utter meltdown while in the shower, Bigelow and Renner add one more innovative iteration to this tried and tested dramatic moment, definitely worth remembering. Watching James try to behave as a 'normal' person in between assignments and the short depictions of his life at home (with a distracting cameo by Evangeline Lily, a great Canadian actress yes, but a wholly unneeded talent for such a small role and ultimately misleading as to the relevance of the character - the only mistake in casting I could find) show that he is truly a regular person, and not in the morally superior way soldiers are typically depicted in American war movies. He might be a 'good guy' but he's no more morally conscious than anyone else. And seeing just how prostrate James is when dealing with an Iraqi professor in his own house (and later his wife) outside his explosives suit shows that he is no super soldier, but a man who truly has a talent for what it is he does when he's on duty. This can be no better depicted than by James' final words to a doomed man - "I'm sorry." As if that would somehow absolve this surrender to the reality of the situation.
The movie is as much crafted as it is directed. Instead of dealing with a Tommy Lee Jones as a mad bomber or an ever escalating series of detonations laid by Jeremy Irons, the bombs that James if faced with seem to work their way down the scale of power. We begin with the six shells from the stark film poster and find our way down to a suicide bomber's vest. While exploring the other possibilities behind this nerve shattering job we are also treated to some delightful cameo's by Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce & David Morse. Any day you can find a way to work Ralph Fiennes into a movie is a good day for me. Chalk full of iconic and memorable images, the cinematography of Barry Ackroyd generates a film that would fit in perfectly as a double pack with David Simon's "Generation Kill". The detonations are real, the production design spot on accurate and the landscape a bitter world of ruined stone and sand. Iraq is less a country and more the backdrop to a well paced play between Renner, Mackie and several thousand kilo's of explosives.
And just when you thought you'd seen it all, this movie drops in a gunfight at what must be the slowest and most white knuckled pace ever depicted on film. The gunfight during the Private Contractors sequence makes any exchange of fire in Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line" appear as if it were directed by Michael Bay. In fact, her shunning of any kind of (obvious) trick, trap or convention in bringing the action to the screen puts Bigelow head and shoulders above most any war movie director of the last five years. Instead of a true war movie we're given a character study fueled by long periods of unbearable suspense. Even if you know Renner isn't going to be killed by one IED or another, you're willing to believe that neither he nor the director was as sure of it at the time.
Priceless in its honesty, genuine in his brutality and unconventional in its approach to war, "The Hurt Locker" is well worth the price of admission at any level. And isn't that really the best recommendation a film can get?
