THE HURT LOCKER

ACADEMY AWARD WINNER FOR BEST FILM AND FIRST TIME

BEST (FEMALE) DIRECTOR

THE HURT LOCKER: WAR IS HELL

"The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." It bothers me when I hear to someone refer to the war in Iraq as a "conflict" or "situation". That's wrong. It is a war and in this film we are shown the front lines up close and personal and indeed, this war is hell.

This film is about a team of men in charge of disarming bombs. The loose cannon (pun intended) is an unpredictable soldier, SSgt William James (Jeremy Renner) whose actions come off as too loose and even dangerous to his team. He mainlines testosterone for breakfast. Renner does an incredible job of portraying this incredibly cocky and also incredibly skilled soldier. The movie is shot documentary style and his presence is more than acting, it's being. He is strong and filled with adrenaline but at the same time, has his moments of reflection and frustration. No doubt, Renner carries the film and is hypnotically easy on the eyes. He makes sweat look good. The film has little in the way of plot or story, but more like a situation and the people involved in it, mainly Renner.
This film was exciting to watch and hard to breathe during. Its big explosives and edge of your seat action is still done in a sort of quiet and powerful way. There are no big soliloquies on how this war is stupid and wrong, it just focuses on the soldiers who serve in it and in particular, this one who is full of testosterone fighting strength. There is death and killing, but there is also a disconnectedness that I would suppose a soldier would want to have instead of thinking about all the killing their doing.

Guy Pearce, David Morse and Ralph Fiennes also are in this movie. I can't say they star in this film, because each of them averages about five minutes on the screen, which was a tease and a waste. When they did have their five minutes of fame it was well done. It also provided more on screen time with Renner, which I didn't mind at all.
Locker provides us with a look at the life that has become all too usual for so many of our fighting troops. It has been called THE war film for the Iraq war and perhaps it is. It also further defines what it means to support the troops and not the war.

BIG bite: Unpredictable, chaotic and surreal; a day in the life look at how this war is hell.