The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker is the best film ever made about the Iraq war and it's effect on our troops. Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal force us to look at the vast wounds (physical and otherwise) sustained by the soldiers with an unflinching eye. Jeremy Renner plays Staff Sergeant William James, newly appointed team leader of an elite EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) unit. James' job is to disarm the very unpredictable bombs scattered throughout the Iraqi war zone. He joins Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), who have just lost their previous leader to an IED explosion. The EOD unit has just thirty-nine days left in their tour and Sanborn and Eldridge are counting the hours. James, however, is a soldier addicted to the adrenaline high that comes with doing something that can cost one his life. James doesn't feel alive unless he's facing death, and he soon leads his team into perilous territory by taking risks with their lives. Outwardly, James displays a too-cool-for-school demeanor that belies his inner tumult. Renner does a beautiful job of conveying the duality within SSG James. When he is standing over the badly maimed body of a child, it only takes one seconds-long close-up to see the torment of war. Anthony Mackie as Sanborn gives an even and engrossing performance as a soldier who tolerates little bush-league bull in his unit. Brian Geraghty is overly angry as Eldridge, a part he could have finessed better. Both Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce appear in one short scene each, but they are both rays of light in this dark, dense world. Kathryn Bigelow is not a prolific writer/director, but she is very, very good. She is spartan with her direction, and never uses three camera angles when one will do. Although, with a budget of $15,000,000, it's possible she had little choice. The best thing Bigelow and Boal do is get across the psychological makings of a character. We see James in his home town after he has finished his tour. He cleans his gutters, chops vegetables with his girlfriend (Evangeline Lilly, looking like the hottest mom the suburbs has ever seen) and plays with his infant son. But as James stands in the grocery aisle, staring at the wall of cereals from which to choose, we know he is going back to war. Bigelow captures that realization so simply and easily, it makes me feel like many other filmmakers are somehow wasteful pollutants.
My Comment is about psychology and how some people choose to ignore it's existence. I'm not arguing that Freud is God. On the contrary, he was as flawed as any man (the cocaine and the misogyny prove that point). But nothing irritates me as much as someone discounting the effect the psyche has on one's behavior. I once read an interview with Mia Farrow, shortly after Woody Allen had left her for her adopted daught Soon-Yi Previn. Farrow was hurt and humiliated and proceeded to take out some that anger on Allen's psychiatrist, whom she felt had played a part in the betrayal. She announced that psychiatry was dangerous, and that every psychiatrist would have his license revoked when the public got wise. I'm not implying that Mia Farrow is viewed as an expert on anything, nor that anyone actually believed her. But statements like hers can be destructive, much like Tom Cruise's bimbo rant against psychotropic drugs used to treat depression. Psychology can be misused by all sorts of people, but that doesn't make it a bad science. The understanding that comes from exploring a person's psychology is tantamount to having the proverbial crystal ball, and that understand is magnified when applied to a character. The Hurt Locker gives us that understanding and wraps it in a violent, horrible package called war.