SXSW Review: ‘The Hurt Locker’

It’s amazing to think that it was a woman director behind such testosterone-laced action flicks as ‘Point Break’ and ‘Strange Days’.   Well, Kathryn Bigelow is back, this time showing us the inner workings of a bomb squad unit in 2004’s Iraq War.

The film stars Jeremy Renner (’28 Weeks Later…’) as Staff Sergeant Williams James, the newest sergeant in charge of an elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit.   James is reckless and daring, always thumbing his nose at death as he boldly walks down bombed out streets towards a potential trap.   Anthonie Mackie plays Sergeant JT Sanborn, the glue that holds the unit together.   More specifically, Sanborn is that which keeps Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) from losing his composure after an early incident that leaves one man dead.

‘The Hurt Locker’ is daringly directed.   Bigelow is a pro at working her camera into even the most intense of situations, and she never makes us feel disconnected from the harsh realities of it all.   When James is tearing a vehicle apart searching for an IED, we are right there in the car with him.   When Sanborn and Eldridge are covering James, searching the are for potential snipers or detonators, we move all about the area with them.

The details in ‘The Hurt Locker’ are amazing.   Here, we see the day-to-day trappings these men have to go through just for the sake of keeping themselves alive.   This is particularly shown in a scene in which the three, along with a group of British soldiers, are pinned down by snipers.   Every detail is shown.   Their guns become empty.   There’s blood on the bullets jamming the gun.   There’s no spit to wash the bullets off from all the heat.   And, then, there are the flies, darting their way in and out as if they were hired on as extras.   It’s an incredible scene, and, dare I say, it rivals the opening scene from ‘Saving Private Ryan’ it is suspense and form.

Where ‘The Hurt Locker’ falls short, however, is in the structuring of the story.   Besides James’ increased sense of laughing death in the face and Sanborn’s increased desperation to control him, there is very little in the way of plot lines throughout.   What we mostly get is scene after scene after scene of this group disposing after one bomb after another after another.   There is one subplot involving James and an Iraqi boy whom he befriends, but the resolution to that plot-line is as confusing as it deflated.

The film’s final moments also grow tedious.  Ã‚   There is a perfectly good ending point, but the film keeps going.   This hurts the film in a number of ways.   One, it makes you think they didn’t really have a way of ending it.   Two, it follows only one of the three, main characters, indicating to us that the film was all about him and not the other two.

A little more cohesion throughout the film and the sense that all three men shared the top spot in the story would have done wonders for ‘The Hurt Locker’.   It probably would have even put the film at the top of my list at SXSW.   However, we’ll just have to settle for a very good film with some incredibly intense direction.

Overall: 3.5 stars out of 5