Henry Saw: The Hurt Locker

The best movie of the year thus far -



This isn't my favorite movie of the year, or the most enjoyable movie of the year, or the film from 2009 I think I will see the most times in my life...but if the Oscars were to occur tomorrow, The Hurt Locker would get my vote for Best Picture.

The film, directed by Katherine Bigelow of Near Dark and Point Break fame, follows three American soldiers stationed in Iraq in 2004 who are part of a bomb defusing and removal squad. The three soldiers, played by Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty all react to their job and being in combat in different ways. Geraghty's character is obsessed by the razor-thin difference between life and death. Mackie's character is only really able to get through the war, and each new encounter with a bomb, by relying on his professionalism and protocol.

Renner, the most interesting character and actor in the film, is the one who deals with the bombs directly. Often forced to wear a slightly ridiculous looking protective suit, Renner's character is fascinating because of his passion for defusing bombs. He's good at it and he knows it. At times he is reckless (one of the great scenes in the movie involves Renner's character refusing to walkaway from a bomb even though the building at risk has been evacuated - he's obsessed with solving how it has been rigged) but Renner avoids acting like a Captain Ahab...we never question the character's courage or nobility.



Bigelow filmed The Hurt Locker using hand-held cameras, and where "shaky" cam usually drives me nuts, it somehow didn't bother me at all here. War movies, in general, are the genre best suited to using handy-cams and Bigelow accomplishes her assumed goal of immersing you in the battle scenes and the environment. Bigelow does a splendid job with the whole film. Some scenes are filled with suspense, others are done with a great deal of patience (including a virtuoso "sniper" sequence), and others with an appropriate eye for dark humor and ironic tragedy. This is by far her best film.

Further, this is the best narrative film (i.e. not documentary film) made about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rendition, The Lucky Ones, Traitor, In the Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss, Home of the Brave...they're all pretty weak films. Body of Lies and The Kingdom, probably my favorite two films about this subject, were okay films but I wouldn't rank either film above a B. The Hurt Locker stands out for it's fresh take on the war film, the fact that it leaves any and all politics at the door (this film is about the soldiers and not the war itself), that it avoids celebrating war while also not having an obtrusive anti-war stance (not unlike Black Hawk Down - the best war film of the last 25 years), and, finally, because of Renner who gives the best performance of the year thus far.

I don't want to write much more on the film, I want to leave it a surprise as it was for me (though lookout for some cameos from Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes among others), but you should definitely check out the Hurt Locker. It's the goods, a movie that honors our soldiers without glamorizing them, and offers more genuine suspense and pathos then any film thus far this year.

Grade: A

Best Scene: The scene I mentioned above where Renner's character becomes determined to figure out how a car has been wired to blow...