Culture Blues

Film: The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow understands men. Dangerous loners, adrenaline junkies, men straddling the fine line between macho risk-taking and utter self-destruction. Bigelow has breathed life into lost boys in three different decades; first with Adrian Pasdar in 87’s cult classic Near Dark, then with Patrick Swayze in 91’s action opus Point Break and Ralph Fiennes in 95’s underrated Strange Days. Now, with The Hurt Locker, Bigelow has channeled her searing understanding of the unhinged male into her finest work to date.

Bigelow (working from a taut script by freshman scribe Mark Boal) takes us into the scorching heat and perpetual danger of post-invasion Iraq. We ride with an elite bomb squad, forty days from the end of their tour, and suffering an internal crisis at a change of leadership.

Jeremy Renner stars as Staff Sergeant William James (The Hurt Locker’s answer to Bodhi), the unit’s new captain, a master of disarmament, a man perhaps incapable of feeling anything without a simultaneous rush of adrenaline. Renner’s performance is harrowing, the audience at once drawn to his “wild man shit” and repulsed by it.

Perhaps just as affecting is Anthony Mackie as Renner’s second-in-command JT Sanborn. Mackie turns in an understated performance as the straight-laced wet blanket, and yet it is his gradual unraveling that provdes an incisive contrast to Renner. Together, Renner and Mackie embody the self-destructive, crumbling male characters that Bigelow has shaped her career around. Late in the film, the internal conflicts faced by these characters, and their inevitable implosions become more suspenseful than even the bomb defusing sequences.

Do not let these descriptions of emotional meltdowns and male crisis fool you. Bigelow has crafted what is very much an action movie. Each sequence of the squad in action improves upon the last. The set pieces are thrilling and often innovative.

The Hurt Locker is slowly making its way across the country, expanding to more screens on a weekly basis. Make an effort to catch this. If not, I’d expect to see a wider release come Fall when, if there is any justice, Bigelow and Renner will receive some much-deserved award buzz.