August 23, 2009
The Hurt Locker explodes onto the screen as one of the year’s most tense and intense movies. Director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) has a talent for creating machismo action movies with psychological depth and visual style. And The Hurt Locker is a gripping, palm-sweating experience.
Stakes are raised for an elite bomb-disposal unit with the arrival of their wild-card leader, Sergeant James (Jeremy Renner). Disarming bombs in an Iraqi war-zone is dangerous enough. But soon, loyalties and lives are on the line when James’ reckless approach plunges the team into a white-knuckle war against their own fear. Surrounded by unseen dangers and facing death at any moment, trust and testosterone are tested to the limit.
Bigelow’s disposal team may be skilled at disarming tension, but the director herself is brilliant at creating it. The Hurt Locker is a ticking time-bomb of a movie with one-set piece after another adding to the anxiety. From the first trundling-trolley shot as a remote-controlled robo-unit is wheeled in to inspect a suspect package, the emphasis in on action. But not the popcorn blockbuster action that usually stuffs the multiplexes.
The Hurt Locker tellingly wrings every ounce of sweat and blood from each real-time scenario. Is the man with the mobile phone making a call or detonating a device? Claustrophobia and isolation almost suffocate us as James faces down a maybe-bomber: his heavy helmet and handgun weigh us down too. Sniper-fire pins us down as James inspects a car-bomb. Anger and admiration flood us equally as the leader’s antics impact on the team.
Bigelow’s trump card is the edgy unexpectedness of each set-up. Low-key casting creates an anticipation of doom and disaster. Cameo faces shouldn’t be taken for granted: Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce are fine but aren’t the focus. Central to The Hurt Locker is the pressure-cooker psychology of men in combat: actions and reactions, coping and catharsis. James is a nutcase – but we need him, a professional dealing with death every minute of the day on our behalf.
Surprisingly, it’s also funny: black humour and bloody violence stand back-to-back. Better, though, than any Tarantino-esque take on military men, The Hurt Locker is a serious life-affirming movie with ballsy action that never leaves reality – rather, it plunges you into it. In so doing, it does justice to our professional soldiers – depicting more than any Iraq-war film yet the psychological price they pay.
Bigelow’s film works as a tense and thrilling action movie. But it’s much more. A complex and powerful movie, it deserves a wider audience than its war-genre image might get. Original, edge-of-seat stuff, The Hurt Locker speaks through its action, and its voice should be heard.
Stakes are raised for an elite bomb-disposal unit with the arrival of their wild-card leader, Sergeant James (Jeremy Renner). Disarming bombs in an Iraqi war-zone is dangerous enough. But soon, loyalties and lives are on the line when James’ reckless approach plunges the team into a white-knuckle war against their own fear. Surrounded by unseen dangers and facing death at any moment, trust and testosterone are tested to the limit.
Bigelow’s disposal team may be skilled at disarming tension, but the director herself is brilliant at creating it. The Hurt Locker is a ticking time-bomb of a movie with one-set piece after another adding to the anxiety. From the first trundling-trolley shot as a remote-controlled robo-unit is wheeled in to inspect a suspect package, the emphasis in on action. But not the popcorn blockbuster action that usually stuffs the multiplexes.
The Hurt Locker tellingly wrings every ounce of sweat and blood from each real-time scenario. Is the man with the mobile phone making a call or detonating a device? Claustrophobia and isolation almost suffocate us as James faces down a maybe-bomber: his heavy helmet and handgun weigh us down too. Sniper-fire pins us down as James inspects a car-bomb. Anger and admiration flood us equally as the leader’s antics impact on the team.
Bigelow’s trump card is the edgy unexpectedness of each set-up. Low-key casting creates an anticipation of doom and disaster. Cameo faces shouldn’t be taken for granted: Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce are fine but aren’t the focus. Central to The Hurt Locker is the pressure-cooker psychology of men in combat: actions and reactions, coping and catharsis. James is a nutcase – but we need him, a professional dealing with death every minute of the day on our behalf.
Surprisingly, it’s also funny: black humour and bloody violence stand back-to-back. Better, though, than any Tarantino-esque take on military men, The Hurt Locker is a serious life-affirming movie with ballsy action that never leaves reality – rather, it plunges you into it. In so doing, it does justice to our professional soldiers – depicting more than any Iraq-war film yet the psychological price they pay.
Bigelow’s film works as a tense and thrilling action movie. But it’s much more. A complex and powerful movie, it deserves a wider audience than its war-genre image might get. Original, edge-of-seat stuff, The Hurt Locker speaks through its action, and its voice should be heard.