THE HURT LOCKER (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008) - Sample Review of 2009 Best Picture Winner

Writing: 8/10
Editing: 9/10
Acting: 10/10
Sand: 10/10
Guns you'll recognize if you play Modern Warfare 2: M4A1 ACOG, AK-47, Barrett .50cal

The bottom line: The Hurt Locker is an extremely powerful film and deserved its Best Picture Oscar; an absolute must-see.

"War is a drug," the opening title card of The Hurt Locker tells us, and the exploration of that metaphor gives this screenplay its unique power.  There are lots of war movies with interesting characters and intense drama, but this is the only war movie I've seen that's also an addiction movie.

Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) steps in as a team leader in the Army's Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit when the team's original leader (Guy Pearce) gets Hitchcocked* out halfway through the first sequence. We are supposed to gather that this takes place early on in the U.S. occupation of Iraq, at which point official protocol for disposing of bombs had not yet been developed. So, the debate over how to best proceed is how the central conflict of this film manifests. James is prone to run headlong into danger and wing it, whereas his teammates (Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) are much more inclined to take things slowly and carefully. 

Of course, the true root of the conflict is James' adrenaline addiction.  And like in any other character study about addiction, we follow him through the highs and the crashes, and see the toll that his addiction takes on the people who depend on him.  I won't tell you whether or not he eventually kicks his habit, because that would ruin the ending.  But I'll say that, for reasons already discussed, this is neither a run-of-the-mill war movie nor a run-of-the-mill drug movie.    

When I started this review by complimenting Mark Boal's screenplay, I didn't even remotely intend to take away from Kathryn Bigelow's execution of the film. She gets painfully real performances from her actors and, together with Director of Photography Barry Ackroyd, made some great visual decisions.  Hurt Locker was shot on beautiful 16mm film.  So beautiful, in fact, that I often have a hard time believing it's actually 16mm. Often,  you can almost feel the desert heat coming off the screen. And the camera work is inspired.  Usually, handheld multi-camera setups in a fiction film result in a faux-documentary feel that can seem forced in the hands of an unskilled cinematographer or editor.  But Hurt Locker doesn't feel like it's trying to be a documentary.  Rather, the camera work is just shaky enough for us to feel as if we're watching a drama that could fly off the tracks at any moment.   

In short, I've always said that truly great movies merit multiple viewings.  But it's very rare that I'll watch a movie, and then pop the DVD right back in an hour later and watch it again.  I did  that with The Hurt Locker.  This is one you need to see tonight.

*For future reference, 'hitchcocking' means to kill off the character played by the most famous actor in a movie relatively early on, a la Alfred Hitchcock killing off the Janet Leigh character at the end of the first act of Psycho.