THE PLANK JULY 24, 2009
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The Hurt Locker opens with an onscreen quote from journalist Chris Hedges declaring war to be a "drug." If so, then Kathryn Bigelow’s film is itself a drug delivery device, a harrowing, exhilarating exercise in tension and release. Ever since the student film she made at Columbia three decades ago--a short in which two men pummel one another while semioticians deconstruct their actions in voiceover--Bigelow has been fascinated with the cinematic art of violence, which she has explored across such genres as the police thriller (Blue Steel), the vampire Western (Near Dark), the FBI-surfer flick (Point Break), and, now, the war film.
The subject of The Hurt Locker is simple yet riveting: the operations of a small U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit in Baghdad. These are the guys who are called in whenever something is spotted bearing the telltale signs of an IED--a pile of street rubbish that seems to have wires emanating from it, an abandoned car whose sagging suspension suggests it’s carrying more than groceries in the trunk. To describe their job as stressful would be like describing the desert as warm.
The leader of the team, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner, in a star-making turn), has the electric bravado of the danger junkie. He knows, and delights in the knowledge, that his chosen vocation would scare the living shit out of anyone in his right mind. He is exactly the man you want performing a job like this, at least provided you are nowhere in the vicinity while he is performing it. That is not an option, however, for his teammates--the cautious Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and just-trying-to-stay-alive Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)--whose enthusiasm for James’s daredevil heroics is decidedly limited.
The loosely structured narrative unfolds as a series of nail-biting set pieces: The dismantling of a few particularly fraught IEDs; an agonizing sniper shootout in the desert; a haphazard attempt at retribution for the apparent killing of a young boy. Bigelow stages these episodes with an extraordinary combination of patience and panache. The rhythm of slow buildup followed by violent release recalls Sergio Leone, but without the giddy Morricone score to mediate the discomfort. (It is perhaps no coincidence that the film wrings more suspense out of the buzzing of a fly around a man’s face than perhaps any since Once Upon a Time in the West.) In sequence after sequence, you’d have difficulty cutting the tension with a chainsaw.
The Hurt Locker concerns itself not with geopolitics but with operational details. (What happens when a wheel falls off the explosives-bearing cart that a tiny robot is hauling out to detonate a much larger bomb? Under what circumstances is an unknown Iraqi with a cell phone a greater threat than one with a rifle?) Such political observations as are offered are more often than not mordant ones, as when James remarks of an Iraqi taken into custody, "If he wasn’t an insurgent before, he sure as hell is now." These men aren’t fighting for democracy or freedom or the president of the United States. They’re fighting for the buddies around them who might be blown up at any second and, secondarily, for the fellow soldiers who might be blown up tomorrow if they don’t do their jobs properly. James is fighting, too, for his own extreme sense of self: his confidence, his unflappability, his willingness to place himself at the very precipice of self-annihilation.
The movie’s political reticence is an almost unspeakable relief after the gaudy hectoring of such films as Redacted, Lions for Lambs, and In the Valley of Elah. But ultimately it is a limiting factor as well. As it suggests at the outset, The Hurt Locker is the story of an addict, but the film itself is complicit in the addiction. Even when James’s exploits are revealed to be fruitless or destructive or outright pathological, Bigelow never quite finds the distance to put a moral frame on them. James is what he is, and the film ultimately seems undecided on whether this is a good or a bad thing.
Still, even as it fails to acquire the narrative gravity for which one might hope, The Hurt Locker is an exceptional work of filmmaking and easily among the best movies of the year to date. Like her protagonist, Bigelow is both a meticulous technician and a ballsy showoff. And, like him, she has ice water in her veins.
--Christopher Orr
6 comments
While I agree that Renner should be propelled to stardom with his extraordinary work here, I found the film suffering from the same flaw as "Full Metal Jacket" in that the build-up is so superb and the follow-through so lacking and unfocused. Still, it has the best bomb-dismantling scenes since 1974's "Juggernaut".
- kevincollins
July 24, 2009 at 2:37pm
The friend that I saw the movie with made the same Sergio Leone comparison. Maybe I just need my need my discomfort mediated by a giddy Morricone score, but it didn't really do it for me the way that Leone's films did. One big difference is that there are no fleshed out villains, just a bunch of random insurgents. So rather than the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, it's the Good, the Generic, and the More Generic. This is probably more true to life from the perspective of a soldier, but it doesn't grab you in quite the same way.
While the slow build-up was very effective in most of the scenes, I thought the sniper scene ended up being boring rather than suspenseful, and I agree with kevin about the follow-through being lacking at times.
All that said, there's still a lot about the movie that was masterfully done. Chris is right that it doesn't have "narrative gravity," but that's because it isn't really meant to tell a story so much as to explore how the characters relate to the violence and danger of a war, and it does a great job of doing this. All three actors were great (I particularly liked Geraghty's performance). And of course the movie was technically excellent and other than the few complaints I mentioned earlier, the directing was superb.
- AlanSP
July 24, 2009 at 4:01pm
I was hoping you were going to review this earlier, but I couldn't wait and saw it last week.
Stunning film. I left the theater numb from the overload of suspense and emotion. Shame it isn't in more theaters. Stupid Transformers gets on every screen in the nation while this film, an amazingly good film packed with action, is stuck playing at a select few.
I disagree slightly about the lack of political or moral focus. We never learn the true reasons for James' actions - is he motivated out of a sense of duty, an inability to adjust to ordinary life, or just to prove his own superiority? This doesn't mean the morality is ignored - it just isn't the point. Warfare produces men who will continue to fight until the day their number comes up. Right or wrong, sane or insane, James is a product of the conflict - a perfect example of the soldiers who "re-up" time and time again, leaving their families behind for a war they can't refuse to fight. The viewer is forced to ponder real questions about the conflict. Do we keep fighting a war we can't win just because many in the military are loathe to quit or admit defeat? What about the very real sacrifices that are made by others - is the conflict worth the human costs at home and abroad? The message isn't overt, and it may not even be intentional, but I felt its presence throughout.
My biggest complaint with the film was the countdown plastered at the bottom of the screen every few scenes. Yes, we get it - the men are trying to survive a few more days until they rotate home. But this is more than adequately revealed through dialog and the visible tension of the characters. Having the numbers shown periodically didn't add to the suspense and lent a cheap feel to an otherwise amazing film.
- bcbaird
July 24, 2009 at 4:15pm
I agree with bcbaird, although the titles didn't bother me. Brilliant movie. Yes, he is what he is, and the whole mess is what it is -- hellish, deadly, cruel, soul-crushing, and, in some cases, to borrow the title of Chris Hedges's book from which the opening quote comes, a force that gives us meaning. This is *not*, as an American Prospect article put it, an army recruitment movie. Good guys die, and die badly, lieft and right. It is from the perspective of the soldiers, but they are frequently scared shitless -- a feeling typically expressed with insistent, professional yelling -- as well they should be. Even our hero, the "wild man," shows disorientatation and fear, but not in the field. Rather, it is when he tries to do something, on his own and off the clock, about a particularly gruesome killing. This compassion-fueled righteous anger gets him nowhere, because there's nothing to be done, and the look of bewilderment on his face speaks volumes. So, lesson learned: extra-curricular feelings aren't helpful. The wild man is sympathetic not because he's a single-minded, impervious robot -- the Jack Bauer type held up in popular entertainment as an ideal hero -- but because he's aware of the gulf separating what he's supposed to be feeling (not as a soldier, but as a husband, father, and human being) and what he does feel -- or, what he is. After a soldier confesses to him that he was afraid in the field, he says, "Everyone's a coward about something." It's not immediately clear, but he's got in mind his own fear of the ride ending and of what's on the other side -- gutters, grocery stores, and a family he can't love enough. He's neither a heartless jerk nor a cold machine, but he is a failure, as far as we cant tell, as a husband, father, and human being -- or he thinks he would be.
- jhildner
July 24, 2009 at 5:49pm
I agree with the reviewer in that the movie was exceptional in terms of the acting, directing, writing, and the cinematography, but disagree with the reviewer with respect to the following passage:
"Even when James’s exploits are revealed to be fruitless or destructive or outright pathological, Bigelow never quite finds the distance to put a moral frame on them. James is what he is, and the film ultimately seems undecided on whether this is a good or a bad thing."
From my perspective, James puts his role into perspective when he speaks with his infant son and tells him about "getting pleasure from one thing" (or words to that effect). It would seem disingenuous if James attempted to moralize his behavior. Like many adrenaline junkies, James is strictly drawn to the rush that he experiences from his work; the moral implications are less relevant than his addiction to the "action" of his job. As an aside, although the issue wouldn't be addressed in this movie, the neurobiological changes associated with this kind of work would cause day-to-day life to become boring and would draw a character like James to his profession.
As for the issue of narrative gravity, I have no idea what that means in the context of this story (or what it means at all. Perhaps someone would define it in this thread). If it means what I think it does, then the story is entirely focused; it is relayed in a manner that is authentic, jagged, stressful, uneven, and not easily wrapped in a neat package. I'm not sure that the movie would have the same impact if one of the characters tried to pull the pieces of the puzzle together in a neat monologue or conversation (a la Tommy Lee Jones in No Country For Old Men).
At any rate, I look forward to others' comments and thoughts.
- Ari111
July 29, 2009 at 11:05pm
I thought the most brilliant scene was when James is home in the states after his tour. He looks like a regular guy. We know that he's been where normally only psychotics get to go, and yet there he is, Mr. Regular, clearing leaves out of a gutter. There's something jarring about it. it's also profound, giving an American audience this "what lies beneath" perspective; and I hope to god it has some impact on people. The scene that impressed me was a long shot, camera low angle, of one of these endless cereal aisles in a grocery store, of which there are millions in this country. In a sense, long air conditioned aisles full of drifting musak, stocked with every imaginable permutation of the totally frivolous crap that drives our economy is representative of who we've become, for better or for worse. Framed against what we know of this guy's recent reality—not to mention the shot itself, where he's a tiny alienated figure at the end of this 100 foot long aisle—we can't help but "get it": he's reduced to level of a consumer making a completely futile choice between one brand of garbage or another—echoing his job description in Iraq, only minus the adrenalin.
- earling
August 2, 2009 at 8:07pm