The Hurt Locker | Little White Lies

The Hurt Locker

28 Aug 2009 / Released: 28 Aug 2009

Soldier running through explosion amid billowing smoke and flames.
Soldier running through explosion amid billowing smoke and flames.
3

Anticipation.

Surely it can’t match Generation Kill?

4

Enjoyment.

Well-paced action sequences will have you on the edge of your seat.

4

In Retrospect.

A commendably mature response to conflict.

Kathryn Bigelow’s long-await­ed direc­to­r­i­al return is a com­mend­ably mature response to conflict.

Amer­i­can adven­tur­ism in the Mid­dle East has inspired plen­ty of cin­e­ma over the last decade, but Kathryn Bigelow’s first fea­ture since K‑19: The Wid­ow­mak­er is much clos­er in style and tone to the war por­trayed in Gen­er­a­tion Kill than that of Jar­head or The Kingdom.

In part, this may be due to its source mate­r­i­al – the film hav­ing orig­i­nat­ed from the pen of an embed­ded reporter, the screen­writer and some-time jour­nal­ist Mark Boal. As such, the script main­tains a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty that offers lit­tle in the way of con­text or back­ground to the action.

Instead, the film focus­es its atten­tion upon the occu­pants of The Hurt Lock­er, a three man bomb dis­pos­al team con­sist­ing of Sergeant San­born (Antho­ny Mack­ie) and Spe­cial­ist Eldridge (Bri­an Ger­aghty) – both of whom are in the final, ago­nis­ing weeks of a year-long deploy­ment in Iraq – and new mem­ber Staff Sergeant James (Jere­my Ren­ner), who has joined the out­fit fol­low­ing the unfor­tu­nate oblit­er­a­tion of his predecessor.

James doesn’t sit well with the oth­er men; their ambi­tion to get home in one piece at the end of the tour coun­tered by his reck­less­ness. He is a wild man who sets out his stall by dis­miss­ing the use of a remote con­trolled robot in favour of don­ning the cum­ber­some bomb suit that allows him to get up close and per­son­al with the IEDs and unex­plod­ed ordi­nance that pep­per the muti­lat­ed land­scape of Baghdad.

The rela­tion­ship between these men pro­vides the dri­ving force of the nar­ra­tive. Oth­er troops are shown fleet­ing­ly, and offi­cers appear only occa­sion­al­ly; their mud­dled attempts to inspire the men under their com­mand light years from the jin­go­is­tic lead­er­ship of Robert Duvall’s cav­al­ry offi­cer in Apoc­a­lypse Now.

Even the ene­my are dis­creet, cast not as fanat­ics but civil­ians resist­ing an occu­py­ing force, try­ing to remain unseen, their iden­ti­ties uncer­tain. A sequence in which a poten­tial insur­gent trades a glance with James, hav­ing sud­den­ly become a non-com­bat­ant by drop­ping the phone with which he had intend­ed to trig­ger the now-defused bomb out­side of his build­ing, is indica­tive of the film’s complexity.

The action itself is episod­ic, with every ounce of ten­sion eked from some stun­ning set pieces where lin­ger­ing shots accen­tu­ate the bleak cin­e­matog­ra­phy and stripped down sound design to draw the max­i­mum heat and hope­less­ness of this hell on earth.

The cen­tral per­for­mances strength­en as the film devel­ops. Jere­my Ren­ner is the stand­out, though the sup­port­ing cast are well deployed – a scene involv­ing an inept team of British con­trac­tors’ offer­ing a wry com­ment about both the futil­i­ty of mod­ern com­bat and the polit­i­cal cir­cus which has led a super­pow­er to deploy mer­ce­nar­ies to do its dirty work amongst the lame cats and skin­ny kids of a war zone.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.