The Hurt Locker (2008)Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse
The closer we get to the Oscars the more it looks like The Hurt Locker is the film to beat, so I wanted to make sure I got out to see it before the ceremony. I had put it off a bit because the more I heard people raving about the film the higher my expectations got and the more concerned I got that there was no way that the film could live up to those expectations. But I bit the bullet and saw it today and must say it didn't disappoint.
The Iraq War is a different style of war to any that we have seen before (in one scene Spc. Eldridge quips, "Aren't you glad the Army has all these tanks parked here? Just in case the Russians come and we have to have a big tank battle?"), and the makers of this film are very aware of that. Because this was is different to any fought before, this war film is stylistically different to any before it. Unlike the frenetic pace and shaky camera of the Omaha Beach landing sequence at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, in The Hurt Locker the intensity is derived from the stillness. The scenes with almost unbearable levels of tension, those concerning the disarming of bombs, involve one man working on the bomb with no one within 100 metres of him, civilians watching on with interest and soldiers watching the civilians with suspicion. Rather than chaotic battles with bullets whizzing everywhere and constant mortar explosions, this film has an eerie quietness to it.
You may know Jeremy Renner from his roles in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 28 Weeks Later or The Lords of Dogtown, or like the rest of us you may have never heard of the guy before. However, he puts in a cracker of a performance as the adrenaline addict, SSG Will James. While there is a danger such a thrill seeking character could become two-dimensional, Renner manages to flesh him out and, particularly in the scenes in which he interacts with local child Beckham, gives an authentic humanity to his character. This is the kind of performance that makes a career. He is already locked in for lead roles in two films in pre-production, The Town with Ben Affleck and the fictional film about Edgar Allan Poe called The Raven with Ewan McGregor, and his name has been linked to two more including the comic book super movie The Avengers. If he could land the Oscar for The Hurt Locker who knows where his career could go. Odds are though that we will see a fair bit more of him.
Generally, it must be said that Bigelow has extracted brilliant performances out of a relatively anonymous cast. The three biggest 'name' actors in the film, Pearce, Fiennes and Morse, combine for a total of about ten minutes screen time. It is Renner, Mackie and Geraghty who shoulder the burden of carrying the film and they do an excellent job. Much like I said with A Serious Man, the anonymity of the actors in leading roles means there is no baggage that the viewer brings when watching the performance, so they can simply accept the character they see on screen.
I'm not going to ruin it for you if you haven't seen it, but I don't think I was completely satisfied with the way the film ended. I don't know that it was consistent with the tone of the rest of the film. That being said, it is not as though there was a more obvious way to finish the film that I can't see why they didn't go with.
The Hurt Locker will more than likely end up being the definitive Iraq War movie much in the way that Apocalypse Now is the definitive Vietnam War movie. It is quite simply a brilliant film and a deserving Best Picture front runner.
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