THE HURT LOCKER A-
USA (131 mi) 2008
d: Kathryn Bigelow
The rush of battle is a
potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.
—Chris Hedges, war correspondent
As the former wife of James Cameron (THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS,
TITANIC), we’ll try not to hold that against her, but it’s hard not to be
influenced by the maker of such monumentally huge Hollywood blockbusters,
probably all were the most expensive movies ever made in their time. As the director of POINT BREAK (1991),
however, one is reminded that its notoriety in film history is not as the best
surfer-heist movie (Is there another one?), but for what has been voted as the
all time dumbest scene in the history of cinema, ranked #1 here: Amazing
Planet: 49 dumbest movie moments .
However, it’s clear that whoever wrote this movie (Mark Boal) has an intimate
knowledge of the subject at hand, as he’s a freelance writer who spent time in
Iraq embedded with a real bomb squad that with each and every assignment was
given the most dangerous, life-threatening missions. It’s a meticulously
detailed portrait of a 3-member special Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) unit
in Iraq in 2004 that attempts to de-activate explosives. One man is the Intelligence Officer, Sgt. Sanborn
(Anthony Mackie), another covers the perimeter with his weapon, Specialist Owen
Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), while the third, Sgt. Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce),
attempts to dismantle the explosive device while communicating with the
Intelligence officer, almost always under a hostile environment, as anyone
nearby, we soon discover, could be responsible for the explosive and may have a
remote to detonate it at any moment. In
the tense opening scene, as Thompson can be heard breathing heavy under his miserably
suffocating special suit in a country where the temperature routinely soars
above 120 degrees, a man with a cell phone is identified out of the corner of
his eye at the last minute, too late for Thompson, the leader of the unit who runs
for his life but ends up making the ultimate sacrifice. Enter his replacement, Staff Sgt. William
James (the uncommonly good Jeremy Renner), fresh from a tour in Afghanistan,
one of the most unlikely of men, as he wins no popularity contests, an older, independent
guy who sets aside all the guidelines which are designed to protect him and works
in his own aloof way, usually at odds with his team who invariably lose contact
with him, yet he’s driven to do the job right, which means staying alive.
It's a confoundingly different, but no less accurate,
portrait of war that focuses on the unthinkable violence as seen through the
minds of the men that are expected to carry out the most dangerous
missions. Without any pop songs to amp
up the mood, or other heavy handed Hollywood trappings designed to manipulate
the audience, one becomes entranced with the narrow focus of the film, which
follows this unit on a series of assignments, much of it near wordless or with
long quiet pauses, as we soon discover James is extraordinarily good at what he
does. He works with extreme calmness
under duress, but the zone of his concentration is so narrow at times that he
may put others at risk simply by ignoring them, which he does frequently, but
he’s helpful as a soldier in ways one needs to be, offering guidance and
support to those less experienced or on the verge of freaking out from all the
stress. At one point, we see Eldridge
intensely concentrating at a war video game, where lurking behind various
structures is the enemy, where the object is to immediately recognize friend or
foe, placing the brain on instant alert, a similar state of mind when in the
field. He visits a doctor regularly to
help him sort out these “issues,” as sometimes it’s hard to tell life from
death. This film is as much about
psychological interiors, as this unit constantly sweeps unknown areas that have
been determined too dangerous for regular foot soldiers, so the camera becomes
the visceral eye of the unit, never knowing what lies behind each door or wall
or window. The audience is mesmerized by
the immediacy of the action, which is continually perceived here as the unseen
danger, filmed entirely in expectation mode, wondering who and where the enemy
(or hidden explosive devise) may be and what will happen next. One of the more intense scenes in the movie
is filmed in near stillness, where the unit gets caught under intense sniper
fire and after an initial state of panic has to recompose themselves and figure
a way out with military precision and skill.
Another is filmed in near blackness, as they attempt a night search
mission in a nearby neighborhood after a suicide bomber blast attacks the base,
where after a round of shots, two men can be seen carrying Eldridge down some
back alleys. In rescuing him, James
shoots at all three, killing both kidnappers but also shooting Eldridge in the
leg, which pisses him off to no end, reminding James that sometimes he pushes
too far, calling him an adrenaline junkie, as they’re a bomb unit, so why were
they doing a door to door search, which is the job of a foot soldier?
There’s two other interesting scenes of note, one where a
commander recognizes James’s bomb expertise, calling him a wild man, and
commends him in front of all the men, forcing him to admit that to date, he has
successfully de-activated 873 bombs. This hardly fits the idea of noble and
selfless combat, sometimes embraced as “the myth of war,” where we enshrine war
in words of glory instead of the mindnumbing reality of death, and instead
veers awfully close to a profession that embraces death first hand, as that’s
an astronomical number of times for one man to tempt death. He becomes so comfortable with that feeling,
with death as his constant companion, that everyone else in his life becomes
meaningless, as they are completely outside his mindset during that moment of
truth. Another, of course, is when his
tour of duty is over and he returns home, and despite constant stories of death
and bloodshed, it’s only a matter of time before he’s back over there again, as
someone of this expertise is like a prisoner who’s more comfortable locked up,
in a world that he’s used to, where being on the outside makes him feel uncomfortable,
which is how James feels about being home.
It’s like the Myth of Sisyphus, where he constantly has to push that
rock up the mountainside, only to do it again and again, always having to tempt
death in order to feel alive. War is
hell, and here it becomes synonymous with the intensity that comes with the
meticulous precision of his profession, which may be the only thing in his life
that he’s that good at, but he’s playing russian roulette. Interesting that in a movie theater, this
same death wish becomes part of the viewer’s fascination, as we can’t take our
eyes off this lurid war game, much like the Knight in Bergman’s THE SEVENTH
SEAL (1957), a man who lives in the shadow of death that follows him around
relentlessly, where one is both attracted and repulsed by a force that taunts
and toys with him to eventually succumb, eventually deciding that resistance is
futile, as they are forever joined in a terrible dance of death, playing
musical chairs, until eventually a chair won’t be there waiting for him.
While set in Iraq, this is not a political film fandango, it examines the psychology of men in danger, and how some
ReplyDeletemen become addicted to it.
Mostly critically lionized, but attacked by many, especially soldiers for being inaccurate.
I didn't take the film that literally, or think of it as documentary realism, but more a stylized almost poetic
look at the insanity of wars and what can happen to those caught up in them, much like `Full Metal Jacket'.
This felt real on a meta level, not a literal one.
There were a few logic lapses that bugged me, and the impact emotionally is (by choice I felt) muted. It's
more a disturbing picture than a moving one.
But it made me think and made my heart race watch hostiles online free, and images and moments have stayed with me for a long time