The Hurt Locker is an atypical war movie. It follows a bomb disposal unit in Iraq; these are people who walk up to bombs and try to diffuse them. It's extremely high stress work and the film shows this while exploring the type of person who would do this work and the effect of the stress on them. The opening quote is telling: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”
The first hour and half or so are four big set pieces of missions the unit goes on with just a little connecting them. The reality quotient seemed really high and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. There's a lot of handheld camera work and a lot of effort is made to make you feel you're in the situation and raise your own stress levels. Like Full Metal Jacket and Black Hawk Down, you get a real sense of the terrain and the location of all the characters in a scene; not enough films do this.
The last 40 minutes adds more to the running story and the tense scenes are shorter. It's an unusual story telling technique, without clear arcs or even a climax. I'm sure this is deliberate to reflect lack of climax in a tour duty, particularly as there's a countdown shown on screen.
The film mostly follows Staff Sergeant William James who's an expert at his job but also quite reckless. This annoys the rest of his unit who fear that he is endangering them. He doesn't say much and yet the film is a skilled character study telling much more with actions than with words.
My biggest gripe with the film is the casting. They were all very good, particularly Jeremy Renner as James, but as the leads were unknown to me, I was more drawn into their story and the reality of the situation. My complaint is with the more well known actors in smaller roles. I didn't recognize Guy Pearce or David Morse, but when Ralph Fiennes and Evangeline Lilly appeared on screen I was immediately taken out of the picture.
The list of great war films is very very long, but it's now one film longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment