The Hurt Locker: Iraq, With Thrills

(2 of 2)

Whether he's stripping a car piece by piece, cutting open a boy's stomach to pull out an IED or joining some Brit mercenaries (led by Ralph Fiennes) in the desert, James is a marvel to see in action. He has the cool aplomb, analytical acumen and attention to detail of a great athlete or a master serial killer--anyway, some gifted obsessive. A quote from Iraq expert Chris Hedges that opens the film reads, "War is a drug." Movies often editorialize on this theme: the man who's a misfit back home but an efficient, imaginative killing machine on the battlefield. Bigelow and Boal aren't after that. They're saying that, in such an infernal peacekeeping operation, the Army needs guys like James.

Related

Photos

A TIME Photographer's Iraq Diary

Photos

Glitz and Glamour at the Venice Film Festival

Stories

• The Hurt Locker: A Near-Perfect War Film

And James needs the Army. He has to do what he's supremely good at, even if the job carries the imminent risk of death. (He has a wife and child back home, but he keeps re-upping.) Other men have a talent for making bombs; James has a genius for finding and silencing them. It's not just his job; it's his vocation. More than that, for him it's fun. If defusing IEDs isn't a drug for James, it's his headiest, most essential adrenaline. Though his mates aren't crazy about his methods--Sanborn sucker punches James in the jaw after one escapade--they'll come to appreciate him. "Not very good with people, are you?" Eldridge says to James. "But you're a good warrior."

Bigelow is a man's director who happens to be a woman. She's paraded her adroitness in two odd subgenres: Near Dark was a nifty teenage-vampire love story, Point Break the all-time surfer-heist movie. She loves to locate affinities in people with opposite agendas, and vice versa; so James is often isolated from his comrades, while he gets into recklessly close contact with the Iraqis. Bigelow is also a whiz at discovering fresh talent, and in Renner she hit the jackpot. The actor is ordinary-looking, pudgy-faced, quiet; can he carry a big film? Oh, yes. He soon reveals the strength, confidence and unpredictability of a young Russell Crowe.

The Hurt Locker has a few longueurs, and once or twice it spells out in dialogue what the images have eloquently shown. But short of being there, you'll never get closer to the on-the-ground immediacy of the Iraq occupation, its sick tension, its toxic tang. This is one of the great war films, and our own Medal of Honor winner for 2009.

Visit RottenTomatoes.com for more takes on The Hurt Locker.

See the 100 best movies of all time.