Review: ‘The Hurt Locker’
by Mike Long
The Hurt Locker is not about Iraq, why we went there, what we did when we got there, or whether we should have gone in the first place. It is not about American foreign policy or domestic disagreement over that policy; it’s not even about soldiers or their qualities or character … it’s not about politics at all.
The Hurt Locker is about an adrenaline junkie who gets off defusing bombs.
Sgt. Will James is very good at this narrow work. He is occasionally a fool who takes unnecessary chances. Far more often he is an expert who enjoys that his wisely bold tactics occasionally make him appear a fool—because a fool’s luck has nothing to do with his success. Early in the picture and after much prodding, Sgt. James admits to a superior officer that he has defused “873 bombs, counting today.”
Nobody’s luck is that good.
This is a telling scene for another reason: He’s happy for the recognition, but painfully shy about it, too. He fairly leaps from the truck to reply to the officer—but it’s because his inquisitor is an officer, not because the question will give him a moment of glory. The officer, played by the always interesting David Morse, has to pry the information out of him and turn it into a boast on Sgt. James’ behalf. Morse’s officer is so unabashedly enthusiastic with his praise that we’re not sure—and apparently neither is Sgt. James—if it is genuine, or a set-up to a dressing-down for the apparently insane risks he’s just taken.
The little-known (for now), Jeremy Renner plays Sgt. James, and he plays him like a guy who would enjoy solving a Rubik’s Cube while sitting on a high-wire over a pit of rabid alligators. Renner’s James is incapable of simply existing. Every moment must be a deadline or the run-up to some test. In his off-hours he plays punch-out with another soldier, and not just for the sake of taking a punch. The two are working through a grudge right out in the open. He creates a brief mission for himself that can have no benefits in its outcome aside from having survived on the quality of its execution. He looks for reasons to get next to live bombs, once on the pretext of rescuing a pair of entirely disposable gloves. Yet even this has more danger attached to it than anyone first thinks, but Sgt. James knows (at least, I think he does), and gets off on the errand all the more because of it.
The Hurt Locker is also a good-looking picture. For instance, the shots of explosions are carried out much more thoughtfully than with the standard “cover it with cameras” action-picture approach. Director Kathryn Bigelow (whose last great pictures were 20 years ago—Blue Steel and Point Break) shoots the gravelly ground rising in slow motion; she gets the shuddering and the debris exactly right (again, as someone like me who hasn’t seen this stuff for real will imagine they should look)—there is never an obvious, go-for-broke FX shot for its own sake here. At times our view of the explosions is mostly one-off detail, and rather than distracting us from the moment, it enhances how we perceive it. That is the purpose of good direction and good camera work: not to draw attention to itself, but to enhance the story.
Which is a little ironic, because The Hurt Locker is not a story at all, but a character study. It is rare that a character study is carried out with so much expert attention to making a truly engaging and entertaining picture. The Hurt Locker is an apolitical and very entertaining movie about a very interesting man.
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19 Comments
Finally, a Big Hollywooder that agrees that the movie is apolitical.
Tough to take the "political" filters off, after you've had more than a dozen highly politicized negative portrayals of the war in Iraq, soldiers coming home from/going to the war in Iraq, etc. Don't think we'll ever see the movie about the soldier that's doing a good thing and helping the Iraqis.
I saw it the other day. Well done, interesting, but there didn't seem to be any redemption at the end, or moral of the story or anything like that. Also, It seemed to end abruptly.
Saw an interview with Renner where he goes out of his way to thank troops when he sees them, think that pretty cool
I'm with those who (unfortunately) see "Iraq" and "soldiers" in a movie preview, and I automatically ignore it since I know it will be another anti-American, anti-military screed. Thanks for clearing that up, since it sounds like this one might be well worth seeing. Jeremy Renner did a yeoman's job in the otherwise ridiculous "SWAT" movie, and was excellent in the recently-canceled TV series "The Unusuals."
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I've heard good things about this movie, I hope it really is as good as I've heard. My main problem is the depiction of demolition teams as adrenaline junkies. I know it makes good story, but I've worked with a couple teams ( only 1 was military the rest were local law enforcement) when I was working on comm systems. They were, to a man, the most boring people I've ever met. A shade short of OCD. Everything in place, everything paced and deliberate. I had one guy a sheriff's deputy that I got into a violent screaming match with because I didn't put on my seat belt. When you deal with homicidal maniacs building bombs, safety is jobs 1, 2, 3, and 4.
What do demo guys think of "bold" tactics? The only physical clue I got was a balistic dummy they had called Sgt Daring that they used to demonstrate explosive, pressure and shrapnel damage to new members. The life lesson they shared was that if you were caught running from an explosion it was your last day on the job: because you had clearly screwed up.
AAAGHH! That's where I recognized him from!! Thank you!
Her last great pictures were twenty years ago? No love for Strange Days? That was a mere fourteen years ago. I know a lot of people deeply hated it, but there are quite a few of us out there who liked it.
Whatever else she accomplishes, she will always have a place in my heart for directing Near Dark, still criminally underappreciated after all these years.
If I wasn't a victim of the current economy, I'd have seen this one already. I look forward to watching it on DVD.
I thought it was excellent. Bigelow specifically set it in 2004 when things were more volatile, and at least for me–with no military connections, knowledge or experience–the sense of tension in the streets when troops are faced with split-second judgement calls that are all intense matters of life and death came across powerfully. I already had admiration for our guys; this just cemented that I can't imagine the courage it takes to do what they do.
I got the sense that the main guy was, not necessarily that _every_ demolition guy was. One guy doesn't stand for the entire profession, any more than I think Edie Falco's Nurse Jackie exemplifies the way _all_ nurses behave. (Thank God)
I certainly hope this isn't gonna be like Deer Hunter…
There happens to be an article that answers your question.
http://armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/2009/07/eod...
To summarize what it seems the soldiers are saying in the article: The movie was good, but it does not portray the U.S. Soldiers as they are.
Blue Steel was boring and uninteresting, Point Break was so much crap and unrealistic that it made cops look like jokes. So now the same director has come out with a movie about a solider who is not accurate to the people or the conflict in Iraq. So technically it is this movie but just in Iraq. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109303/
It is not about Iraq? Isn´t that another way of admitting that it would be pretty flawed if it were about the ongoing conflict it is set it? I call that the "Apocalypse Now" excuse. Sure, "Apocalyse Now" is a fine movie. But it would be nice to see at least one intelligent movie about this war. I take it "The Hurt Locker" is not that movie.
I´d also like to think that it would not have occurred to anyone to make that excuse for a WW2 movie released during the war or for at least a decade after its end. They didn´t need to because the movies did not make our soldiers look like immature maniacs.
Very well said. There seem to be two schools of thought on this issue: some people think the setting and context can be incidental to the story and others do not. (I fall into the latter category.) Given the amount of attention that filmmakers spend on details, it seems cheap and dishonest to ask the viewer to consider the fact that the movie takes place not only during a war but within a war, is incidental. Even more so, the characters participate in it. "Oh but it's not about that." That's a rather lame assertion. Again, well said, and your analogy to "Apocalypse Now" is an especially apt observation.
Thanks for the excellent review. I'll put it on my to-watch list.
Cliff Clavin/
"Actually Mike, alligators can't get rabies. Rabies is a disease that only mammals and marsupials can contract."
/Cliff Clavin
Strangely, no one puts a disclaimer in front of the movie: "What you are about to see is incidental"
How can the setting be incidental – and the movie "apolitical" – when the war is still going on and we have our people still in the field? This isn´t Thermopylae or the Trojan war (paradoxically, the German director of "Troy" went out of his way to draw parallels between that war and the "war based on lies" that Bush started. And "300" received political interpretations on both sides of the spectrum. So THAT was about the current war but THIS is not?)
Finally, why am I supposed to be happy that after a string of antiwar movies the best we can get is an allegedly "apolitical" one? Perhaps I want to see a political Iraq war movie! It is nothing but an admission that a serious, truthful movie about Iraq would automatically transport the wrong kind of politics and can therefore never get made. It´s either dreck of the "Redacted" type or "Backdraft with Bombs".
Sheesh, I didn't know that about Troy. Double yuck.
While filmmakers are often obviously trying to have it both ways with the audience, I think many conservatives gave certain movies a pass because they really want a movie about this conflict that depicts what conservatives know about the military (that it represents America's finest men and women) and our sense of life about America.
Those of us who won't drop aside the relevant simply because it is inconvenient and who won't allow technical skill to trump values. . . well we're still waiting.
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