Vintage

“War is a drug,” states the quote at the beginning of 2009 Best Picture nominee The Hurt Locker, the gripping drama about a bomb diffusing unit in Baghdad. As someone on the outside, having never been in war, as a great many viewers of this film surely were, that is a hard statement to believe. But if the suspenseful portrayal of life as a soldier in Iraq is at all accurate then it’s a little easier to see how the relatively boring routine of the life we live at home, the life that these very soldiers fight to protect, is hard to readjust to once the tour of duty ends and the soldiers come home.

The actual action of The Hurt Locker opens with a shot of a robot equipped with a camera inspecting a potential bomb. At the time Guy Pierce, Sergeant Thompson is donning the protective bomb suit as the head of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit when an explosion goes off and kills him. Thompson is then replaced by SFC William James played by Jeremy Renner who brings a more renegade style of work to the unit made up of Sergeant J.T Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge.

Sanborn and Eldridge form an interesting team. By not responding while in the bomb suit, taking the bomb suit off and being generally hard to deal with James rubs his fellow soldiers the wrong way, especially the fragile Eldridge who occasionally talks to a psychologist, still shaken by seeng his former comrade die in action. Despite the difficulty and stress that James causes, though, it can’t be denied that he is good at what he does.

In a series of tense episodes where a bomb can be detonated at any second he calmly diffuses the problem while we, the audience, sit on the edge of our seats watching, waiting and listening to the shrill wails of ambient music reminiscent of There Will Be Blood, a former Best Picture nominee in its own right. Such situations, along with a sniper standoff some English contractors share with James and his mates against Iraqi enemies make up the bulk of the movie.

Other than that there is really not much of a plot to speak of. The main underlying theme, I guess you could say is the countdown of days remaining in their tour of duty. As the number gets smaller the tension grows as you expect something terrible to happen at the last minute. While this certainly makes for an entertaining film, it does not help its chances to be awarded the industry’s top award.

Cinematically The Hurt Locker is captivating, with occasional shots of dust clouds twirling, garbage blowing down the rubble-strewn street and empty bullet casings bouncing if the sand in slow motion, a certain symbolism can be seen that perhaps denotes the loneliness of war. After all, no matter how close you are with your cohorts, the main objective of any soldier is to survive, to keep himself or herself alive more than anything else. Everyone could read that symbolism differently so it doesn’t necessarily make the film all that great.

The same can be said for the end of the film when James returns home to his estranged wife and his young child. James is talking to his child about how as you grow older you love less and less and how he only loves one thing. We next see him stepping off a plane for another tour of duty, leading the audience to assume that the only thing he loves is war. By showing this scene the filmmakers tie a nice little bow on the story as they remind us of the opening when it is said “war is a drug.” That may be true, the thrill of the battle may be addicting, but unfortunately this movie is not. It is good. A QUEEN I would say. Just not equal to the hype.