The Hurt Locker (2009)

“War is all hell,” said William T. Sherman, who knew something about it if anyone did. The epigraph to Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker also tells us war is a drug. Bigelow’s film takes us inside the lives of three men for whom war is sometimes both of those things, but for whom it’s most often something more pedestrian: a job.

The Hurt Locker follows a bomb disposal squad stationed in Iraq, where “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs) are the current insurgent weapon of choice. Those IEDs are these men’s job. Someone reports one, they go defuse it. It’s that simple—and that complicated. The movie explores what happens when the squad loses a member in action and gains a replacement. The replacement is Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner). He joins Sergeant J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), a no-nonsense security expert, and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), a crack mechanic but slightly nervous soldier. Sanborn and Eldridge have a routine, laid down by James’s predecessor. James doesn’t care. James is brash, self-reliant, and scarily competent (asked by a superior how many bombs he’s defused, his answer is over 800). Under James’s guidance, the team is successful, but their nerves fray. Which will blow first—one of the IEDs, or the squad dynamics? This sounds like not a lot of plot for a two-hour-plus movie. And that’s right, it’s not. But neither is there much “plot” to the bomb squad’s existence: wake up, find bombs, destroy them and try not to die. Try telling them that’s not exciting enough.

The Hurt Locker’s strength is exactly that it takes an outrageous situation and treats it with the utmost normalcy. There is little flash to this film: the leads are, mostly, unknown or little-known actors; the special effects do not call attention to themselves; and action scenes, when they unfold, feel natural, not choreographed. The script is based on the recollections of Mark Boal, a journalist who spent time shadowing one of these bomb squads in the real Iraq. The result not only earned Boal an Oscar, but also a lawsuit from a soldier who found the film too close to home. It’s thus no surprise that the film almost feels like a documentary. Only the occasional slow-motion scene or artistic camera shot reminds us that we’re watching art and not life. This is not a “war movie” with grand marches or epic battles. There is no “sweep” to these three men’s war—only a daily grind. Human enemies are seen only fleetingly (though the movie establishes that almost anyone in Iraq may be an enemy). The real enemies for James, Sanborn, and Eldridge are bombs, and time. And, to some degree, themselves.

Much rides on the performances of the three leads. True, they lack starpower—but that proves and advantage here. These actors cans slip easily into roles without our making assumptions based on casting. Imagine how much mystery would be lost if Will James were played by, say, Tom Cruise. Instead, we are allowed to get to know these men by what they say and do. Yes, Sanborn is uptight—but he has his reasons for that; it helps him survive. Yes, Eldridge seems a little troubled (he sees a shrink) and maybe naïve—but he’s also quick with a joke at the right moment and fiercely loyal to his team. And, yes—James is a loose cannon. But he, too, has his reasons. His off-putting manner is a function of his confidence. Renner creates a complex man, a man who is, in his way, in love with war because it’s what he excels at. James keeps a box of trophies under his bed—parts of bombs he’s disabled, which he keeps out of respect for their makers. James finds it awe-inspiring to hold in his hands “things that almost killed him.” His partners think he’s nuts, which tells us a great deal about them, and about James. That The Hurt Locker takes time for moments like that is what makes it special.

The film has been sometimes described as an “action movie,” but this is unfair (especially given the sorts of films that label often adheres to). It’s a human drama laced with intense moments of combat-related suspense. “There is no terror in the bang,” said Alfred Hitchcock, “only in the anticipation of it.” Much of The Hurt Locker seems constructed around this principle. Bigelow maintains our interest as much through what isn’t happening onscreen as what is. At a time when more and more movies seem compelled to use cheap CGI to create massive battles, it’s refreshing to find one that strips combat down to its essentials: a moment of life or death. Other movies centered on the Iraq conflict(s) have tended to emphasize the resulting cynicism (Three Kings) or the fears of corruption and conspiracy (Syriana, Body of Lies). The Hurt Locker stands out for taking neither of those routes. It does not shy away from the fact the war is hell, nor does it neglect the often irrational behavior of wartime bureaucracy—but those topics are left in the background. They are a part of the bomb squad’s world, but not the center of that world. The center is survival. Politics is for the folks back home, or in offices.

Is The Hurt Locker the new template for war movies? Probably not. There will always be a place for the more conventional combat story. What Bigelow’s film gives us is an unusual marriage of action and ideas. It has fun flipping our ideas of convention on their heads (notice that all the “name” actors here—Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse—have little more than cameo roles), but it also quietly subverts some of our notions about war and those who fight it. How do you cope with a job that places you daily in the way of the worst kinds of harm? What do you have to do to yourself to face that? And what if you enjoy it? Yes, war is hell. And it can be a drug. And—oddly enough—it can come to be home. Many of us don’t like the idea of war. We’d sleep better at night in a world at peace. But what about a man like Will James? How well would he sleep, with no bombs to go after? It’s for allowing questions like that to linger at the edge of my mind, after keeping me on the edge of my seat, that I recommend this movie.