The Hurt Locker

Year: 2008
Running time: 131 minutes
Certificate: 15
Language: English
Screenplay: Mark Boal
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes

Kathryn Bigelow is one of the most gifted directors of action there has ever been, and while Point Break is still her most infamous calling card, The Hurt Locker leaves Bodhi and co in the dust. Adrenaline-soaked tension permeates the film and it is one of the most intense films I've seen.

James focuses on nothing but the job at hand.

William James (Jeremy Renner) is the new bomb disposal technician joining a team of soldiers trying to keep some kind of order in occupied Baghdad. James is the replacement for the team's previous technician after he dies attempting to dispose of a bomb in an astonishing prologue set-piece, setting out from the start the magnitude of the stakes involved. James and his maverick approach to his work does not endear him to his new colleagues, J T Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) and seeing as they need to rely on each other for their lives, this makes for a tense, unhappy environment for them.

The set-pieces are excruciating, each one framed, filmed, acted and edited so expertly as to be breath-taking. If there was any doubt from substandard efforts previously put out by Bigelow (K-19: The Widowmaker, for example), then this establishes beyond doubt that she is a master of her craft. There is a focus on the sheer exhaustion of the soldiers, both physically and mentally, stuck here in a situation they know to be largely hopeless. But the wider angle is also covered and in each terrifying firefight, each taut disposal sequence you are always sure of what is going on and where everyone is in relation to everyone else. The grasp of physical locations of characters in relation to each other and the events during an action sequence is something few people seem to get and Bigelow's grasp of it is equal to Spielberg, who is famous for being a master of it.

Failure in the field carries a high cost.

James manages to ride his luck all the way back home, and the scenes of him at home, lost, out of place, missing whatever it was he's got addicted to out in the field, are brief portraits of a man changed by military service into a person not remotely like the person he used to be (although this article from Walter at Vanity Fair suggests the point The Hurt Locker is making about addiction might miss the mark). So he goes back. I can't speak for him, I can't judge him; what right have I to? I've been through no experience in my life that can come anywhere near (and I fervently hope I never will). This article from Christopher at The Stranger talks a little about the ending and it's refusal to tell us what we should feel about James' decision to return to Baghdad. All I know is Kathryn Bigelow and her crew crafted one of the most intense cinematic experiences I've ever had.

I loved Avatar, but frankly The Hurt Locker is a better made, though less narratively-satisfying, film and Oscar made the right call choosing Bigelow over her ex-husband.

Score: 9/10

Reviews out there are generally glowing and rightly so - see this one from Anthony at The Independent and this one from A. O. Scott at The New York Times.