Review of the film The Hurt Locker

            The ongoing conflict in Iraq is beyond my understanding here in the U.S. It takes place half a world away in an environment and culture unlike anything to which I have been close. The whirlwind of issues surrounding the events past and present there are things I will probably, hopefully, never experience. My life can be complicated, frightening, strange. But I have to remind myself not to forget those true stories that leak around the curve of the world to the United States, that people as real as me experience a day to day life much more harrowing than my own.

            It may be a fictional narrative, but the film The Hurt Locker attempts to place before our eyes some of the true harrowing nature of the Iraqi conflict. The story by journalist Mark Boal tells of the day-to-day affairs of a three-person bomb squad in Baghdad. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it plays like a series of adventures, albeit life-threatening adventures, as the soldiers go about disarming IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device) throughout the war and sanction-ravaged city.

The unit is newly lead by Staff Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner), a man who is brilliant at his work, who is teetering on the brink of death and sanity every day as he goes about doing what the Army has charged him with and what he loves doing. We can see the adrenaline junkie that he has become; he throws caution away in order to do that which he is the very best at, defusing bombs. The other two men in the squad, Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are not as enthralled with their task of supporting James. They are both scared by what they do, understandably. The days until they can go home are mental ticks they mark off in their heads; it’s an almost visible occurrence. They want to survive, but James seems to only want to get to the next fix of his obsession, damn the consequences.

            Those consequences are starkly evident throughout this film. Director Bigelow never allows the audience to forget what the stakes are as the team goes from one deadly situation to the next. The story centers on these three men, but it also is about those who live and die on the margins of their tale. This is, most specifically, the Iraqi people who must survive in this landscape of constant war and continue, or not, to do so even after these soldiers have gone home to their families across the world. I looked at those individuals the hardest, the population the Army is supposed to be protecting, supporting—those whose dignity and lives are forever on the line.

This is a nerve-jangling film, suspenseful and hypnotic. There are so many levels to why this is, but I think it has a lot to do with the focus Bigelow shows. She does not stray from these men’s story, but those incidents and individuals that ultimately invade that tale and those lives are not simply scenery. They truly change these characters that we watch, and they truly fester in our memories. And there is no doubt that their impact will linger beyond the credits.