Luke
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CibbuanoThe Hurt Locker
February 14th 2010 07:20
This is my pick for the Best Film Oscar, partially because it (amazingly) has something new to say about war, but mainly because it also happens to an excellent film. It takes the premise of war as a drug (it plainly states this before the movie starts) and really runs with it, with director Kathryn Bigelow crafting a teeth-shatteringly tense action masterpiece that makes all it's points in ways that only a visual storytelling medium like film can make.
Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are part of a U.S. bomb disposal unit in post-war Iraq. They are assigned a new team leader in the form of Will (Jeremy Renner), who starts upsetting the unit's status quo with his reckless and endangering behaviour. The film plays through their tour of duty, counting down the days to it's end through a series of set pieces demonstrating the kinds of threats the U.S. army is up against... interconnected webs of bombs buried in the dust of the streets, car bombs, bombs hidden inside the bodies of the dead, snipers, etc, etc. As one senior officer (David Morse) gushingly describes him, Will is a 'wild man', an otherwise unassuming soldier who puts himself at risk to defuse dangerous bombs over and over again.
Aside from being quite a ride, this is also a fascinating and very well-researched film. The characters talk like real people and the situations they face in Iraq are entirely credible. It's a deft, tense piece of filmmaking full of little touches that help to create a concise and effective bigger picture, using each set piece to up the ante a little bit more each time until you just can't stand it anymore. Kathryn Bigelow has been an unsung talent for far too long... not only did she make the underrated and cliche-busting Strange Days, she's also responsible for Point Break, the greatest action film of all time. In The Hurt Locker she's made one of the most startlingly original and unpretentious war films in recent times, which is no mean feat when you consider how much the genre usually retreads the same ground. Thematically speaking, it's actually quite daring... most directors are keen to point out that war is 'hell', but few would dare to suggest that we actually enjoy it. Considering how often the human race goes to war against itself, it's mindboggling that few films care to explicitly examine the reasons why.
One of the hallmarks of war films is the bonding nature of high-danger situations, and how war scenarios can turn soldiers into brothers. The Hurt Locker doesn't ignore this truism, it instead builds on it to show what the war environment really does to a person. Will is addicted to the risks he takes, so much so that it blinkers him to the danger he can put others in. As he goes deeper and deeper into his tour of duty we watch his adrenalin addiction grow and we see the damage this does to those around him, and also how it warps his reality (witness the subplot that spins off from the bomb he finds in the body of a dead boy). Will's own nature is altered so much by this terrain that he is unable to even adapt back to a normal existence when he goes home - it isn't the usual post-war trauma, it's more a sense of boredom and unreality where his need for adrenalin isn't sated. At first it seems like a strange place for the movie to go, but it paves the way for one of the more unusual and effective endings ever put in a war film, and should ensure that The Hurt Locker goes down as one of the all time greats.
TRIVIA: As of 2010, Kathryn Bigelow is the 4th female to ever be nominated in the Best Director category. After Sofia Coppola (for Lost in Translation), she is also only the 2nd American to get nominated.
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