The Hurt Locker

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s first film in six years, The Hurt Locker follows three American soldiers (Jeremy Renner’s cocky James, Anthony Mackie’s pragmatic Sanborn, and Brian Geraghty’s jittery Owen) as they encounter a series of perilous situations during the last few weeks of their tour in Iraq. The episodic structure employed by screenwriter Mark Boal admittedly does take some getting used to, as the film, which is essentially plotless, consists primarily entirely of stand-alone sequences detailing the central characters’ various day-to-day escapades. There’s little doubt, however, that the almost unbearably suspenseful nature of some of these scenes (eg James must disarm an explosive strapped to a reluctant suicide bomber) effectively ensures that one’s interest rarely flags, although it’s worth noting that the movie does start to run out of steam towards the end (with the inclusion of a fairly tedious nighttime mission certainly not helping matters). That’s an awfully minor complain for a war film that is otherwise uncommonly taut and uniformly well acted; in terms of the latter, Renner delivers a breakthrough performance that’s nothing short of stunning in terms of its power and effectiveness (Mackie and Geraghty, along with cameo players Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, and David Morse, are also quite good).

*** out of ****