The Hurt Locker

What it's about:

Sergeant First Class Will James (Jeremy Renner) joins a bomb disposal unit in Baghdad in the post-invasion days of the Iraq War. His reckless methods cause him to clash with the other members of his team as they count down the last days of their duty rotation.

What we thought:

I used to think that war movies were a polarizing genre: you either like them or you don’t. Many people are put off by their bravado and glorification of violence. But then a work like The Hurt Locker comes along and blurs all those lines and distinctions. The danger is that the movie never really finds a big audience – and that seems to be the fate of this film, being the lowest-grossing Best Picture Oscar winner ever. But if you give the film a little concentration and patience, the rewards are immense – for just about any viewer.

The plot line is simple: Bravo Company, an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit in Iraq, gets a new team leader. Sergeant James, a risk-taking cowboy of a technician, also happens to be supremely good at what he does – which is defusing bombs and not getting blown up. His behaviour puts him at odds with his unit, who just want to survive the remaining days in their tour of duty.

The film relies far more on suspense than action: the agonizing minutes that pass while Sgt James fiddles with an IED (improvised explosive device), sweating it out in a bomb suit in the blazing desert sun, keep your heart in your mouth for much of the ride. This is when the film truly shows its mastery: where story, camerawork, sound design and editing come together to evoke the constant near-panic sense of being in a war zone where your enemies are almost impossible to identify. After such high-stakes anxiety, their adrenaline-drenched relief upon returning to safety makes it easy to understand the opening quote: "War is a drug".

The relatively unknown Jeremy Renner does outstanding work as Sgt. James. His swaggering, combat-addicted persona hides the insecurities of a man who has forgotten how to function in the normal world, and this heartbreaking undercurrent belies his machismo enough to make him a sympathetic character. In keeping with films like Jarhead, the soldiers in The Hurt Locker are scared, brash, and fallible, as well as being gutsy – in short, they’re human.

A lot has been said about a female director helming a film so emphatically masculine. It almost certainly had something to do with Kathryn Bigelow’s Best Director Oscar win. And perhaps some of the film’s most touching moments – a shared box of juice, horsing around with an Iraqi kid, a supermarket aisle full of cereal – do owe some debt to a feminine sensibility. All I know is that it makes me happy to live in a world where a director, man or woman, can make a film so thoroughly ass-kicking and affecting at the same time.

The Hurt Locker has earned its accolades, and is likely to linger with you for some time. It manages to take the best bits of other films – the sniper scene from Full Metal Jacket, the after-hours bonding of Platoon, the scared soldiers of Saving Private Ryan, the struggle with the civilian world of Beau Travail, the Colonel Kilgore character from Apocalypse Now – and blends them into an intelligent work that transcends the genre. It deserves a much bigger audience than it’s going to get – which means it’s something you ought to see.