The Hurt Locker (***)

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Evangeline Lily, Christian Camargo

Seen: April 2^nd 2010

*** Out of ****

The Hurt Locker starts off with a quote that is very important to remember for the rest of the movie: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” To forget this during the running time of the movie would take away some element of the movie from the viewer. The movie then continues with an Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) unit busy on assignment, a bomb next to a road in Iraq, for which they are planning their strategy approximately 200m down this road. The team’s staff sergeant, Thompson (Pearce), puts on his suit and walks out after their first plan fails. Walking away from the bomb after placing a shaped charge on it, his team members notice an Iraqi man handling a cell-phone not far away, and start storming to the rescue. But the man presses send on the phone causing the bomb to explode, and the impact of the explosion is shown on a few things; a welling of the ground; a close-up of the frame of a derelict car, and Thompson running away from the explosion, with blood exploding into his visor. And you know it, you’re in for something special with The Hurt Locker.

Thompson is replaced by Sergeant First Class William James (Renner), who tells the team he doesn’t want to replace Thompson, but just get the job done. His version of getting the job done is very cowboy-like however, and with each assignment Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Geraghty) grow more negative towards him, believing he is going to get them killed by not doing things by the book. James is reckless on every single assignment, taking off his bomb-suit whenever he pleases, breaking contact with his team, and basically being a wild-man, as he is called by Colonel Reed (Morse) commander of US soldiers at the UN building, a site of yet another bomb disposal.

In-between assignments the soldiers are shown on base, interacting with the locals (James gets “close” with an Iraqi boy who calls himself Beckham), and each other (drinking, “fight-clubbing”, and dealing with the assignment just completed). “Bigger” name actors have mostly bit-parts, with Guy Pearce dying quickly, and David Morse and Ralph Fiennes only in a few distinct scenes.

The Hurt Locker is definitely a good movie, but it really isn’t the brilliant picture it’s been made in the press and at the award shows. The film is far too long with too little constant adrenaline keeping the viewer on the edge of the seat. The constant slightly slow action scenes lose their impact in their mass numbers, and I believe any one or two of them could have been cut from the final film and it would have made the movie better, more streamlined. Each action scene on its own is brilliant, but the movie just throws too many of these “drug hits” your way in-between the cool-down periods, and by the 1:50 mark the movie gets really long, 30 minutes from its end. The conclusion still has some power though, with the ultimate display of the addiction war can be to some right at the end, as James can seemingly not stay away from war – and as the end-credits roll, you remember his face as reaction to the way things work out...