Okay, so we start the film with a close up of Guy Pearce… awesome, tell me more. He’s wearing a full battle suit in the arid and devastated urban landscape of Iraq… keep going. We see a bomb detection robot scuttling over the dirt and debris towards an unseen target… Yes! Guy Pearce and his black comrade make an amazing joke regarding fallaces… I love it. They find a bomb and the rest of the soldiers have a hard time controlling the populous…. I can feel the tension! …Then all hell breaks loose… You, madam, have just blown my mind.
That is exactly how I imagine my conversation with Kathryn Bigelow would have gone if she had approached me for funding for The Hurt Locker. Then I would have thrown bags of money at her.
But I can only dream to have been a part of such a gem of modern filmmaking. Every scene oozes action and tension. I was gripping my seat rests, holding my knuckles to my mouth and staring gape jawed at the sheer amount of danger and unknown that was presented at every turn.
The film follows a bomb disposal unit called EOD. I’m not sure they tell us what that or IED stand for, but I didn’t have time to stop and ask myself or be bothered. I was too busy fearing for every character in the films life!
The main character, Staff Sergeant William James, played brilliantly by Jeremy Renner (the main army guy from 28 Weeks Later), is a “wild man” who never uses bomb bots and prefers to suit up and casually walk up to every bomb he is presented with. His two team members are scared out of their minds at the danger that his recklessness puts them in and you, as the audience, feel every screaming beat of their heart.
Few films do such an effective job of choosing an emotion to convey and literally bathing the viewer in that feeling. The predominant emotions in this film are paranoia and fear. I felt like I was standing over the bombs with dozens of potential hostiles around me, ready to set it off. And even though Sergeant James is a little uncouth, I fully understood his motives and personality. Bigelow’s directing and character portrayal is that effective, even with few words.
Not too long into the film, I thought to myself; ‘this will be the quintessential film for this war.’ It perfectly displays just how little we knew going in and fighting this war. But also because every other Iraq or Persian Gulf war film has been pretty lackluster. Remember Jarhead? That film by that guy who made American Beauty and Road to Perdition. Remember how boring and forced everything felt in that movie? Remember how the main character was a sniper and how the big climactic sniper battle wasn’t that entertaining? Well your disappointment in that film will be raised to new heights when you see just how badass of a sniper scene Bigelow directs into The Hurt Locker.
Many war films and even non-war films have tried to portray a character’s inability to cope with the mundane nature of normal day-to-day life before. But never before have I seen a man standing in front of the cereal aisle in a grocery store and squirmed uncomfortably in my seat.
The Hurt Locker is simply astounding. If you enjoy feeling things when you go to see a film, then you must see it. Everyone else should too.
