Tuesday, 29 December 2009

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The Hurt Locker

A brilliant war film that doesn't glorify its soldiers or pity them - just tells it like it is

Kathryn Bigelow directs The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker doesn't bang a drum for war and it doesn't wring its hands either.

Instead director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) gives us two hours of almost unbearably tense and human study into a bomb disposal unit in Iraq.

Based on screenwriter Mark Boal's experiences as an embedded journalist in Baghdad in 2004, the film describes the last 39 days of duty for the three-man unit of the US Army's Bravo Company.

Through roadside explosions, sniper attacks and a suicide bombing we witness the increasingly fraught relationships between thrill-seeking sergeant Will James (Jeremy Renner), his calm comrade Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and nervous newbie Owen Eldridge.

It's impossible to watch without remembering the life of our own brave and funny bomb disposal expert Staff Sgt Oz Schmid who was killed on his last day of duty in Afghanistan in November and those soldiers who will have to carry on his work.

For once we get a war film that doesn't preach to you with the director's political views and as such it gives a much more convincing portrait of what it must be to be out there.

The Hurt Locker is out on DVD now.

Gillian Crawley