Sitges 09: THE HURT LOCKER Review

[Yes, I know this one has already had it's US theatrical run but with it screening as part of the Sitges festival, I can't resist pulling my review forward again. This film deserved more love than it got.]

I present to you a basic Hollywood reality that should have been recognized long ago but apparently has not been: This is a bad time to be making an Iraq War film. Good film, bad film, big cast, no cast, fiction, documentary, it really doesn't matter. Whatever the merits of the film in question - and there have been a number of good ones made - if it is about the Iraq War it is destined to fail at the box office as has been proven repeatedly over the last year. The conflict is still far too fresh, still far too much in the news and an audience overloaded by Iraq every night on the six o'clock news simply won't pay money to see more of the same on the big screen. Too bad for Kathryn Bigelow, then, because with The Hurt Locker she has put together one potent piece of work.

Set in the current Iraq conflict The Hurt Locker tracks a three man unit through the final days of their military service. The threesome has just over a month left, their task: finding and defusing bombs. It's a job that demands precision and absolute trust, a job that has zero margin for error, but the balance of the group is shattered with the arrival of new team leader Will James. It's James' job to actually defuse the bombs while the other pair offer support and protection but James has zero regard for protocol, zero regard for the safety of his team members, constantly rushing in to situations poorly prepared, riding from one wave of adrenaline to the next.

Bigelow has created one sterling bit of film here. It is impeccably performed, keeps the tension ratcheted up to the highest possible extreme, and manages to capture both the scope of the conflict while remaining close and intimate. It is also a surprisingly apolitical film. If Bigelow has any opinions on the causes and course of the conflict she keeps those opinions resolutely off the screen, focusing instead purely on her central trio of characters and the effects the conflict is having on them. When you're on the ground with bullets flying, after all, you really don't care about why you're there, all that matters is surviving to see another day and she captures that feeling perfectly. The stresses play on each of the three principles in different ways and Bigelow does a remarkable job of showcasing each of her three characters without ever sermonizing, without feeling the need to spell out their histories. She simply lets them live and lets us observe. By focusing on a bomb squad Bigelow has found not only the perfect image to capture the war in Iraq - where roadside bombs play such a hugely prominent role - but she also finds a squad of soldiers that everybody can sympathize with regardless of their political bent - however they got there all these men are trying to do is clear the country of weapons designed to kill and maim indiscriminately and it's awfully hard to criticize them for that regardless of their behavior.

Bigelow shoots her film with such an incredibly high degree of technical skill and a willingness to put all of her characters at risk that it may well be the most immersive and compelling war experience caught on film since Ridley Scott;'s Black Hawk Down but where that film was plagued with overwhelming "Go America!" rah rah, this film avoids that particular trap throughout. Yes, it's impossible not to feel a certain thrill through some of the action sequences and the story is certainly told from the American perspective but the film is also smart enough and honest enough both to capture the confusion and disorientation of its leads, the complexities of the situation and to show all involved as more than a little bit flawed. After a solid two hours of subtle character work Bigelow can't quite resist the big, overwrought moment of exposition at the end, just in case anyone out there has missed the point, and while the final sequence is heavy handed and unnecessary it is certainly not distracting enough to do any serious damage to the film as a whole.