The Hurt Locker: Iraq, With Thrills

U.S. soldiers heading to Iraq, especially before the 2007 surge, had little to look forward to. Just the 130° heat and streets full of men, women and kids, any one of whom could detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) and blow a street and all its people, American and Iraqi, to bits. In this hell-storm, what's left for an ordinary soldier to do? His job.

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• The Hurt Locker: A Near-Perfect War Film

American movies took ages to address Iraq and its satellite wars, and then tended to point fingers at the military. Documentaries said that soldiers were bred to be mindless killers (The Ground Truth) and then discarded when they lost their limbs or their minds (Body of War). Dramatic films like In the Valley of Elah and Redacted said that Iraq was a communicable disease that turned decent guys into psycho killers.

These worthy films were based on fact and told a microscopic truth, but they left untold the larger ache of an Iraq tour: how men in peril survive. Finally comes The Hurt Locker, a scary, thrilling patrol of those Baghdad streets by men who defuse IEDs. Written by journalist Mark Boal (whose reporting was the basis for Elah) and directed by action-movie maven Kathryn Bigelow, this film looks, feels and smells real; you'll need to rinse off the grit after seeing it.

A U.S. Army bomb-disposal unit has three people: an intelligence officer, the specialist who covers the scene with his rifle and the staff sergeant who walks up to the device and tries to turn it off. The movie opens with the report of one such device on a Baghdad street. After some studiously cool guy talk, to reassure his men that this is just another day at the office, the staff sergeant strides toward the contaminated area in his heavy haz-mat suit, looking like an astronaut on Mars, complete with an R2D2-like robot on wheels. He disables the IED, and as he walks away, his comrades spot a man about to use a cell phone. The spaceman turns and runs. Too late: BOOM! The bomb explodes and so does he. Blood seeps down his helmet visor like red rain on the wrong side of a car windshield.

In these first minutes, The Hurt Locker sets its theme and tactics. Its heroes are brave soldiers, sanitation men in a place where the detritus is deadly, and on every mission they risk their lives to save those of a people they may not like and probably don't understand. The opening also tells viewers to proceed warily. At one moment they'll be watching in their seats; then, without warning, it's duck and cover.

With the death of their boss, the two survivors--Sergeant J.T. "Bomber Mike" Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)--get a new boss, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), an Afghanistan vet who lacks his predecessor's leadership skills and bluff camaraderie. James doesn't say much and just does his own thing, which is to keep little pieces of Baghdad from blowing up.

We soon learn that James is nuts, but exactly the right kind of nuts for the job: ice-water nerves and a go-it-alone bravado to match his ninja expertise. Finding a string nearly buried in street rubble, he lifts it and finds it's attached to half a dozen bombs. Blithely he snaps a wire, making the devices harmless. Piece of cake, six slices.

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