What an odd film to be released in the middle of the summer. The Hurt Locker would have felt more at home somewhere in the fall or winter, but either way it was a pleasant surprise. This was a powerful film with a nomination worthy performance by Jeremy Renner.
It is always a welcome sight when I get to see a movie that just feels completely fresh. The Hurt Locker is about a soldier who disarms bombs during the war in Iraq. That is it. There isn’t a larger message about the war; this is just the story of Jeremy Renner and how he and his unit deal with their insanely tense job. And since this felt completely original, every time a bomb was being disarmed I believed that something was going to go wrong. Instead of cheating like a horror movie with obvious music cues and editing, just watching Renner’s character ripping apart vehicles and cutting wires kept me on the edge of my seat. Having the countdown of how many days the unit had left in Iraq made me wonder if the 3 of them would get out in one place. This was a perfectly plotted film.
I’ve mentioned him a few times already but enough cannot be said about Jeremy Renner. He has been a familiar face for most of the last decade yet never really was put in the forefront. The Hurt Locker gives him that opportunity and he delivers a performance that was beyond expectations. He has a maniacal obsession with his job that crosses the border into insanity. And you get to see the good and bad that his mindset caused. Then again I wonder if all his problems actually stemmed from being married to Kate Austen, which is a fate worse than death and would cause most people to disarm bombs in Iraq just to get away.
The Hurt Locker is the type of movie that I expect to see when the Oscars are around the corner, so it was a welcome sight in the middle of the summer. There have been a handful of movies based on the war in Iraq recently and this one was the most original and definitely belongs on the top of the pile.
9 out of 10
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