2010’s “The Hurt Locker”, directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty,
David Morse, Ralph Fiennes, and Guy Pierce.
Winner of an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director
(Kathryn Bigelow), Best Original Screenplay (Mark Boal), Best Film Editing (Bob
Murawski and Chris Innis), and Sound Editing (Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray
Beckett),
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor (Jeremy
Renner), Best Cinematographer (Barry Ackroyd), and Best Musical Score (Marco
Beltrami and Buck Sanders).
What is it about?
“The Hurt Locker” is about a group of US bomb disposal
experts (Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) stationed in Baghdad, Iraq, during
the Bush lead Occupation. After losing their supervisor to an insurgent created
Improvised Explosive Device, he is replaced by Jeremy Renner’ s character.
Renner proves to be a reckless adrenaline junkie, constantly putting himself
and his coworkers at risk- drawing the ire of his personnel. Between unfriendly
civilians, hostile snipers, and pyrotechnic Isis booby traps, will Renner’s
cavalier personality send the squad to an premature retirement?
Why is it worth seeing?
Screenwriter Mark Boal was embedded in Iraq during the
occupation, and wanted to create something representative of his chaotic experiences
in Baghdad. Director Bigelow was happy to oblige, and makes something here that
feels authentic, personal, and essential. Filming with multiple handheld
cameras to represent a variety of angles, Bigelow makes us feel embedded in the
heart of an intense ticking street-side bomb about to go off. There are multiple scenes where you will find
yourself begging for a bomb to go off and just end it already- the very heart
of suspense.
Renner is wonderful here, diving into a performance that is
part brain surgeon and part monster truck. Despite his best intentions, he is
affected by the travesty of war, and the ruthless lengths an unseen enemy is
willing to go to get results. That goes double for Mackie, who wants to follow
procedure, do things the right way, and get home alive so he can think about
starting a family.
Filmed with an artistic flair that has lead to some claiming
that “The Hurt Locker” serves as military propaganda, it actually has more in
common with journalist Chris Hedges novel, 2002’s “War Is a Force That Gives Us
Meaning”. Here, Renner and his squad’s attempts to defuse bombs and chase
insurgents into all sorts of situations speaks to a degree of cavalier
narcissism that has nowhere to go but full on into the next impossible
situation, full of danger and supposed purpose. It’s these powder keg inspired
occupational hazards that lead our heroes to spend their downtime getting drunk
and beating each other up. Clearly, as comedian Bill Hicks has claimed, it
would be nice if it took less than an actual war to make us feel better about
ourselves.
With a great ability to choose when it has silence and when
it has horribly good accompanying symphonic score (by Marco Beltrami and Buck
Sanders), “Locker” was a culmination of director Kathryn Bigelow’s previous
eclectic successes, such as “Near Dark” and “Point Break”. She was the first
woman director to both win Best Picture and Best Director, and she deserves it
in this unforgettable journey into the zeitgeist of people who feel more comfortable
being at risk of being blown up than visiting a fully stocked supermarket.
No comments:
Post a Comment