The Hurt Locker (2009)

2 years ago

The Hurt Locker (2009)

WALKING INTO THE BLAST RADIUS

by Monsterbeard

Rarely do films attempt to directly communicate the experience of our brave men and women in uniform. Hollywood is much more comfortable with a sole action hero defying explosions to put an end to a vast network of terrorists. We’re generally more comfortable with celebrating our successes than looking too closely at the cost. Which is perhaps why Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker is not a Hollywood film.

Jeremy Renner gives an exhilarating performance as Staff Sergeant Will James, an EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) soldier whose thrill of danger and excitement has led him to the other side of the line of risk-taking. One of those guys who’s done enough tours that he’s no longer really surprised by anything and knows the little secrets to surviving you wouldn’t know unless you’d “really been there, man.”

Dragged along down this dangerous path are his squad-mates, the disciplined Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), doing his best to maintain a facade of structure and order on each mission, and the frayed and uncertain Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), wily enough that you’re pretty sure he’s eventually going to come unhinged at some point like Hudson in Aliens (“Game over, man”). Together they are counting down the days until their tour of duty in Iraq comes to an end. They are the men called when an IED is found. They are the ones who willingly walk into the blast radius.

To say that the film is tense doesn’t do it justice. It is tension, visualized, our characters constantly in danger, threats coming in all possible manner of shapes and sizes of ordinary Iraqis who may or may not be preparing to kill at any given moment. The enemy is the people you’re protecting is the enemy, and we can’t help but be pulled along in frantic paranoia. The opening scene alone, the meticulous approach to just one IED, is enough to get you to the edge of your seat and keep you there throughout.

Luckily, Bigelow (who also directly the habitually underrated Point Break, Keanu Reeves notwithstanding) understands the importance of character, and we’re given intimate, albeit brief, glimpses into the hearts of our heroes. James has a tenuous but heartwarming relationship with a slick young Iraqi kid selling DVDs on the base. Eldridge confesses to his doctor that his doctor can’t begin to understand his confessed feelings. And Sanborn tries to keep his sanity in a place that is constantly reminding him how insane the world really is. Yes, war is hell, but our soldiers are not demons, they are men, hardened and frail, aggressive and gentle, the thousand-yard stare and the puppy dog eyes.

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James keeps a morbid collection of diffused triggers in a basket under his bed, but it’s important to remember that this hurt locker isn’t the only one in the film. There is much more that goes unsaid. As things get increasingly out of hand, one can’t help but wonder how long these soldiers can live on the edge, like the end of a whip ready to snap and crack violently through the air.

Giving any sort of politicization a wide berth, The Hurt Locker neither criticizes the war in Iraq nor romanticizes the military. The horrors of war are grotesque but not overt. R&R is sparse but in supply. It travels an even keel that keeps us from idolizing while informing us enough to admire.