“If he wasn’t an insurgent, he sure as hell is now.” So quips Staff Sergeant William James after shooting out a Baghdad cabbie’s windshield with his sidearm, and then pressing the muzzle in the center of the man’s forehead in an effort to get him to move his car out of a dangerous area. The line is delivered with a wry smirk as the driver is subsequently being hauled roughly from his car by a nearby squad of heavily armed American soldiers. The clever dual-purpose nature of the line — equal parts bravado-fueled action hero witticism and pointed political statement — is at the heart of what makes The Hurt Locker the best film yet made about the Iraq War, and the best American film about war since Platoon.
Director Kathryn Bigelow is no stranger to blending sly social commentary with high-octane action. The gender role subtexts of Blue Steel and Strange Days make both into far more interesting films than they might have been otherwise, and are particularly intriguing considering Bigelow’s role as one of the very few women in the testosterone-laden fraternity of action movie directors. Her place outside the boy’s club may have its price: one wonders if a male director who made a bomb as huge as Bigelow’s last feature, 2002’s admittedly dreadful K19: The Widowmaker, would have had his career derailed quite as severely as she did. No matter: Bigelow is back, and on her own terms with an independent feature that cost a tenth of what that film did to make, and that is ten times as good as anything she’s done before.
Jeremy Renner gives the performance of his career as Sergeant James, who is every bit the iron-willed action hero that his wry one-liner while in the face of constant danger might imply. He’s an Army Ranger heading up an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit composed of himself and the two soldiers tasked with watching his back while he goes in to defuse bombs planted around the city during the bloody 2004 insurgency. His cohorts, Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge, are ready to go home: both have less than a month left in their tours when James replaces the former leader of their trio, and all they want is to get out of Iraq alive and intact. It’s a task James seems to want to make more difficult with his caution-to-the-wind lone wolf approach to his job. The ticking time bomb scenario is one of the most naturally suspenseful in all of cinema; here, it’s the subject of nearly every scene, and is ratcheted up even further by James’ seeming recklessness. Bigelow takes full advantage, squeezing every last bit of tension out of every scene, leaving the viewer breathless in their wake, and exhausted by movie’s end.
