The Iraqi war for a US soldier has been described as a series of long, boring segments of time punctuated by intensely messed up shit. Most movies about war are structured that same way: short-but-sweet battle sequences spliced between character development and emotional plot points. The Hurt Locker takes that formula and flips it on its ass.
The movie follows a US bomb disposal unit during its deployment in Baghdad. After the loss of their team leader, Staff Sergeant Will James is assigned as the team’s replacement. The other two members of the unit, Sanborn and Eldridge, quickly realize that James is a bit off-kilter. The thrill of adrenaline has clouded his judgment to the point that he seems not to care about the safety of his team or the Iraqi civilian population.
When you are at war, should you ever have to fear death from your own commanding officer?
The first thing you see in the film is a quotation that ends with ‘War is a drug.’ Obviously that is subjective, but it couldn’t be more defining for the main character, James. After defusing well over 800 explosives, James has disassociated the defusals from saving lives and instead has become addicted to the rush it gives him, making a dangerous game out of the ordeals. His lack of regard for himself and everything around him elevates the action of each scene to new levels of intensity.
And intensity is what triumphs in The Hurt Locker. The movie plays out much like a single-player campaign of a video game: you arrive at a mission, complete said mission, move on, rinse and repeat with no real recovery time. It’s a series of defusal/battle vignettes with little plot transition between. And somehow it still works really well.
The defusal scenes are like multi-layered puzzles. The characters are thrown into various situations with very little intel aside from the fact that a bomb has been discovered at some random location. James’ outwardly lackadaisical approach to each situation combined with Sanborn and Eldrige’s attempts to assess their surroundings and civilian onlookers puts the viewers at the edge of their seat.
There is no big bad guy. Everything and everyone can be a threat, even in the viewers’ eyes. The unknown factors and the unseen players are what makes this film resonate. Everyone is expendable (which makes for some pretty novel cameos). Not being able to predict the outcome for anyone in any scene is a rarity in film and a welcome experience.
While the many defusal scenes are uniquely gripping even with regard to each other, the sniper battle was what sealed this movie for me. There is a scene that plays out exactly how I would imagine a true sniper fight would. Once the chaotic realization had faded that an enemy sniper had spotted the squad and they were hunkered into their retaliatory positions, it just becomes a waiting game. The intense boredom that comes from a situation like that has to hurt, both mentally and physically. They can’t move, sand is blowing in their eyes, and the gunner and spotter constantly have to fight to stay awake. The realism of what transpired was just phenomenal.
What surprised me though was the amount of humor woven into the dialog. Jeremy Renner (who plays the lead role of James) adds an excellent sarcastic undertone to the film. He’s a nice juxtaposition to the grit and isolation, showing enough humor to mildly mask the insanity that’s growing with his addiction to war.
However, the movie is not perfect. The one flaw it has is actually the same reason I believe it was made in the first place. The film isn’t about the story of these characters, but rather the visualization of what they go through on a day-to-day basis. It’s an experience rather than a journey.
Character development suffers from that fact. There’s no real plot to push the characters (or the audience) forward. The action sequences are amazing, but without a plot to string them together, they do feel a bit hollow. Granted, each character had personal traits well defined within the movie, but none of them were fleshed out well enough to carry the film without a true plotline.
Overall, I do have to recommend The Hurt Locker, if just as an action movie. Though I thought it lacked a full narrative, the experience itself warrants at least a matinee viewing.
The Official Movie Trailer:
