Hurt Locker (Drama)

For the first time since I've been writing this blog, I struggled to meet my self imposed weekly deadline. Not because this film didn't move me, but because it moved me in ways that I found difficult to articulate. 'The Hurt Locker' is a confronting movie about the Iraq War directed by Katheryn Bigelow (the ex wife of Avatar's director James Cameron). The opening quote from Chris Hedges (who was a war correspondent for the New York Times during the Iraq War) sets the scene perfectly - "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug". And "War is stoopid" should've been the concluding quote I say.

'The Hurt Locker' follows an elite army bomb squad in Iraq during the chaos of war. And if watching several bomb detonation scenes in slow drawn out detail isn't enough to build suspense, the film is also shot in documentary style which contributes to the tension even more. I read somewhere that the way the camera continually zooms in and focuses on close ups of the bomb detonation is designed to have the audience focus on the detail and prevent a focus on the bigger questions such as "why war?". Interestingly, it had the opposite effect for me -watching someone obsess over the detail of a single bomb when people were dying all around him seemed to amplify the feeling that war is pointless, futile, and almost ridiculous.

The film focuses on three soldiers each with very different personality styles and comfort levels with the war. The main character is Sargaent Will James (Jeremy Renner), the leader of the squad who is called in to replace his predecessor (played by Guy Pearce who made an all too brief appearance). Will is a solo operator who is fearless, arrogant, and seems to only care about himself but he has a unique talent for defusing bombs. In fact he's a bloody genius. Then there's Sargeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), the second in charge - a brave, reliable, and honorable soldier, who at times is quite torn about the war in Iraq but even so, his loyalty to the cause is boundless. The third key member of the bomb squad is Special Agent Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) who is young, inexperienced and always scared but still performs his duties to the best of his abilities. For this reason he may be the bravest of all three. And whilst the bomb scenes are certainly gripping to watch, it is the interactions between these three very different characters that made the film so compelling to watch.

In particular, Will's character had me intrigued. Upon first impression he comes across as a reckless cowboy but as the film progresses you find yourself more and more confused about his character and what makes him tick (pardon the pun!). Is he just a reckless adrenlin junkie or is he sacrificing his own fears to save the world? Is he doing this job because he is good and selfless or is he a selfish jerk? Did it make him brave that he consistently threw himself in the face of death, or was he just too scared to face himself in normal life? And then it got me thinking about why I needed him to be one way or the other. In fact I needed him to be one way or the other so badly that I couldn't even write about it!

And then I concluded that it was because I needed him to make sense.

It made me realise how much we do a similar thing in real life. That we need to categorise people as good or bad, jobs as interesting or boring, relationships as right or wrong - because we need life to make more sense. But ironically maybe life would make more sense if we accepted that the same person can be callous in one situation and tender in another. That the same job can make you feel both energised, and exhausted. And that losing something can be make you weaker and stronger all at the same time. As the 'Hurt Locker' develops, all three characters show parts of themselves that make it more and more difficult to make sense of them and actually that's what made them so interesting.

Another interesting theme was related to fear and in particular, conquering fear. It's impossible not to admire the bravery of all three characters in 'The Hurt Locker" but while fear seemed to be paralysing for Special Agent Eldridge, it was like a lifeblood for Sargeant Will. There's a great scene towards the end of the film when Will finally makes it home and he's hanging out in a very domestic scene in the kitchen with his wife and son.

And for the first time since the film had started I felt relaxed.

He was finally safe and home! But the stability and the security of being home seemed to suck the life out of him. For his own sanity, I felt like he needed to be sent back to a place where his life was at risk. And I was almost expecting that I might be able to make sense of him once I saw him at home but even Sanborn doesn't get any closer to understanding him when at one point on their way back from battle, he turns to Will and says: "Will, how do you do it? You know, take the risk? ...and Will says "I don't know, I guess I just don't think about it".

I highly recommend 'The Hurt Locker'. Action filled war movies don't usually leave me feeling anything much after the credits roll but the Hurt Locker stayed with me for days. It makes you think about the kind of person you are - Am I a Will? Or a Sanborn? Or an Eldridge? Truth is I think I'd like to think I'm the kind of person who is energised by the excitement, the fear, and the riskiness of the choices one faces when detonating a bomb, but I think that maybe I'm the kind of person who prefers to be faced with the choices in the cereal aisle.....And for a few days that felt like an uncomfortable conclusion to write but maybe the point is to just accept the one that you most resemble, or at least get comfortable with the fact that you might be bits of both.

• The film was shot in Jordan, the coutry right next door to Iraq
• It was initially released straight to DVD in Brazil but after it attracted attention and several awards, it went to theatrical distribution in February 2010
• Most of the actors were relatively unknown, the biggest names were each in the film for less than 10 minutes Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, and David Morse