Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
9/21/09
Just as the war in Iraq finally
winds down/moves to Afghanistan, the subgenre of war movies it inspired
finally comes of age with Katherine Bigelow's The Hurt Locker.
Yes, the movie does offer a brutally immersive look at the life of soldiers
in the modern war zone, and as such could be interpreted as an anti-war
statement on those grounds alone. But it is not primarily about that
war, or any war, but about the strange, tortured soul of a single warrior.
As that soldier, a bomb expert who can truly be said to be addicted to
war, reliable character actor Jeremy Renner takes his game to a whole new
level. The same can be said of Bigelow, the greatest female action
director, who's made better movies but never one quite this bruising.
With its' deliberate pace and refusal to offer answers, The Hurt Locker
is an easier movie to admire than it is to love, but it's a worthy addition
to both the genre and the discussion it exists to encourage.
Sgt. Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce)
leads his bomb disposal unit to the site of another IED. With their
remote detonating wagon missing a wheel, he'll need to set it off himself.
Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mickie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)
suit him up, then spot a suspicious man carrying a cell phone. Before
Thompson can get away, the bomb has exploded, and Camp Victory needs a
new Explosive Ordinance Disposal expert. They get it in Staff Sergeant
William James (Jeremy Renner). Unlike the professional Thompson,
James casually lives for the rush. Anti-mortar covers on the windows?
Nah, he likes the sun. Why bother with that bomb disposal suit?
It didn't save Thompson. Sanborn and Eldridge become more and more
concerned with the danger his cowboy tactics put them in, even prompting
Sanborn to casually ponder a little friendly fire accident. The longer
their deployment lasts, the more directly James engages “the enemy”, leading
his men into the surrounding streets where he himself makes a dangerous
search for answers regarding an Iraqi boy (Christopher Sayegh) he befriends.
Eldridge becomes convinced he'll die before his time is up, while the efforts
of another officer (Christian Camargo) to keep him going might do more
harm than good. The days keep ticking down toward the unit's ticket
home, and James has a wife (Evangeline Lily) and son waiting for him at
home. But if he's not risking his life, exactly who is William James?
And that is the question
with which The Hurt Locker is primarily concerned. We watch
him under all sorts of pressure, and watch him casually walk as close to
death as he can get. But we also see that there are limits:
it's not so much that he wants to die as that he wants to RISK death, and
he doesn't really seem to care who he takes to that edge with him.
He has a confidence in his ability to keep those around him safe bordering
on madness, or is it simply the junkie's lack of concern? Because
there's no question he's a junkie: the movie opens with a larger
quote that fades to the words “War is a drug.” But I have to say
I was unprepared for the final scenes, which state his argument for the
war zone over the homefront in stark, heartbreaking terms. One of
the ways in which we were sold this war was the notion that somehow the
soldiers WANTED to fight, that they'd had their training, and they were
just itching to put it to use. But if life at war if preferable to
life at peace, is that really something we should support?
It is, as advertised, a breakout
performance for Renner, who takes us along on Staff Sgt. James' emotional
roller coaster without so much as a line to explain where he's coming from
until the last ten minutes. It's a true tour de force, allowing him
to be heroic, funny, cool, desperate, crazy and despondent within 130 minutes.
Beside him, Mackie and Camargo are so good at projecting a soldier's hard-working
professionalism, I'd believe they were the real deal playing themselves.
Geraghty skillfully balances hopeless despair and a face that doesn't quite
reach the level of “brave”. Bigalow has managed to fill out her cast
with name actors in small roles, and Pearce, Lily, Ralph Finnes as a the
doomed commander of another unit and David Morse as a Colonel basking in
the second-hand glow of James' heroism are all solid.
By shooting literally next
door at a Jordanian refugee camp, Bigelow is able to maintain a stunning
level of authenticity both in the locations and the extras, who make the
Iraqi populace seem as utterly alien as they must to soldiers who know
nothing of the language or the culture. And the action sequences
are superb in both their realism and literal ticking bomb suspense.
The best comes late in the game when James tries to disarm a seemingly
unwilling suicide bomber. What's most interesting from beginning
to end is the way Bigelow abandons movie physics and substitutes the real
deal: this is not a movie where you can outrun an explosion.
A lengthy duel of snipers in the desert is both suspenseful and oddly anticlimactic.
Once the last person hundreds of yards away has fallen, all there is to
do is wait what you feel is one moment longer than any unaccounted-for
parties on the other end would wait to take another shot at you.
There is a certain something
missing that keeps The Hurt Locker from being all that it could
be. Perhaps it's the way the movie keeps cutting back to the number
of days left in the characters' deployment but can't make it feel like
time is really a factor. Perhaps it's the simple fact that its' episodic
structure contains just a few too many episodes. But either way,
the movie starts to lose momentum around the 90-minute mark and only recovers
in its' final scenes.
The Hurt Locker is
able to accomplish something most of its' Iraq War Movie brethren could
not: it feels like one has been genuinely transported to the war
zone, with its' mixture of constant danger and relentless sameness.
It doesn't pretend to tell us what's in “The Troops'” minds, instead content
to tell us about one man and his troubled, unhealthy relationship with
the thrill of disarming bombs. And if you'd never heard Jeremy Renner's
name before, it assures that you will certainly hear it again. |
