The Hurt Locker

War movies are hit and miss with me. Love Full Metal Jacket; don’t much care for Platoon or Apocalypse Now. Loved Live From Baghdad, but that was more of a journalistic fascination than a war fascination. So when I heard of this movie several months ago I wasn’t really sure what to make of it.

Regardless of whether or not I would ultimately like it, it was at the very least intriguing. To me there’s not much more badass and therefore compelling than dudes who walk up to fucking bombs in Iraq and disarm them. That’s just…silly. If someone asked me to defuse an M-80 while wearing the Iron Man suit I would pee myself and run away crying.

Moving on…

The story follows one of these dudes (well, technically three dudes, but two of them just cover the bomb de-fuser guy from a distance) who are called the E.O.D (Explosive Ordnance Disposal).

The guy who wears the suit is played by Jeremy Renner, whom I didn’t know had this magnitude of acting chops. He was brilliant; incendiary even. He’s a cocky guy who is almost irritatingly good at his job, much to the chagrin of his team members who think they are being put in unnecessary jeopardy.

Throughout the film you get to know more about him and that his seemingly reckless behavior is fueled not by hubris or arrogance, but rather an indulgence in an escape from his civilian life that turned out quite different from what he planned. If that last sentence is too convoluted for you, I apologize. I was trying to get all literary on a bitch.

The film adds plenty of tension to a number of very unpleasant situations. War is not pretty, and this movie doesn’t make it Hollywood. People die and at the end pretty much nothing is better or even different.

One of the more confusing parts of the movie are the bit roles filled by big-name actors. Pretty much no one in this movie is a big name, but then Ralph Fiennes shows up for like a minute and a half and Evangeline Lilly does too. It was kinda distracting, but I got over it. Oh and also the dude from Memento and L.A. Confidential. Whatever his name is.

If Renner isn’t nominated for Best Actor I will lose what little faith I ever had in the Academy in the first place. I mean he wasn’t as good as one of those blue cat people that rides around on a dinosaur on the floating island planet, but he was pretty good.

Immediately after watching it, the score ranked around a 75, but I found myself thinking about it a few days later and how I really liked a lot of little nuances that I didn’t really pay attention to in the moment. A really good film is one that makes you remember it long after the DVD player lay silent.

This one is worth a watch, without question.

Score – 84