THE HURT LOCKER
dir: Kathryn Bigelow
"The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug." - Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
Brief Synopsis
A newly assembled bomb squad unit in Iraq must learn to cope with each other if they hope to survive a terrain where any civilian is a potential enemy and any object is a potential bomb.
Why It's Here
After several years of desert warfare flops, The Hurt Locker, an independent production, swoops in undetected and makes all the connections other films haven't. People over politics. In the past, war propaganda films had captivated the public's interest and attention in their political agendas for everything from buying war bonds to denouncing unpopular wars. It's sometimes tough to look back on films from the 1930's and 40's because the underlying message is almost always stopped at "support our troops", even bonafide classics like Casablanca contain undercurrents of war propaganda. When the Vietnam War rolled around, Hollywood's nature to pull to the political left was shamelessly apparent with films like Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and Platoon which criticized the war for it's damaging effects on the psyche of the young men enlisting. These at least made for interesting viewings, unlike their patriotic WWII counterparts, because a characters deteriorating mental state is almost always more interesting than rallying for patriotism (not that there is anything wrong with that, of course).
By the time we get to the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the communications landscape has changed. Journalism during Vietnam revealed the true horrors of warfare, and then untrustworthy politicians during the Iraq invasions do little to reassure the public. The most memorable movie of the Gulf War, to me, is Three Kings, and it stars two former rappers, is about finding Saddam's hidden treasure and includes a sequence where Ice Cube throws a football with bombs attached to it at a helicopter to blow it up. The films that try to stab at the arrogant administration are preaching to the choir, and attempts to represent the futility of war end in embarassments like Home of the Brave, or give up and just become action movies, ahem, The Kingdom. When Iraq War films aren't stealing concepts from war films of the past, they are competing with the more attractive dialogue that is the internet. Suddenly the public is able to respond to each other directly, or their favourite newscaster than relying on dramatizations to impose their feelings on them.
So, finally, we get to The Hurt Locker. The first film about desert conflict, or more specifically, Iraq, that dodges most of these pitfalls. True to the nature of the film-going public, it was immediately criticized for these deviations. It's a film that doesn't go out of it's way to say a lot on a grander scheme. It's about a bunch of boys, and their lives, day in, day out.
The Hurt Locker is one of those films beneficial from repeat viewings. It has an irregular structure, there is no real rising conflict, no great climax, and no developed resolution. The another day, another dollar routine elevates it's sense of realism opposed to dramatics, which is suiting, considering it's a film about people, real people, even if it isn't directly. It maintains a middle ground between the tediousness of Jarhead and the incoherent slaughter of Black Hawk Down because it doesn't approach themes of psychology or horrific violence head on. What The Hurt Locker does approach head on is who these young men are, and how did they get there.
The bomb expert at the heart of the film, William James, is a fairly self-contained arrogant brat who jeopardizes the lives of his fellow troops because he gets more of a rush out of defusing bombs if the stakes are higher. Or so it seems. The film is brilliant at slowly developing it's characters without the audience really taking notice, leaving many people to misunderstand the movie as flat and without any development. James, like the bombs he defuses, is actually hardwired into the way he is. His talent is bomb defusal, not killing, that's not what he's there for. His arrogance is also sheer confidence, something that the other men in his unit can't share considering their are emotionally scarred from their last bomb expert being killed, and the constant civilian hawks that spy on every operation. Their experience develops their fear. James however, has a different past, and his fair share of wounds, but like some sort of tick, has an affinity for bombs. To eccentuate that point, James keeps a basket of bomb parts under his bed from every defusal he's ever done, which ranges beyond 300, and he remembers every one.
While I said that The Hurt Locker avoids the pitfalls of other modern war films, it isn't completely resistant to them, and to a degree war films depend on certain archetypes to be emotionally engaging. It's true that the other members of the unit, Sanborn and Eldridge, are nervous at every defusal because they witnessed their former friend blow up. It's true that the film ends on a note of dedication so strong, it's hypnotic, crippling any notion of a "normal life", but the film never lingers on these issues. Each man reaches his tipping point at one point or another in the film, if Iraq can't supply a man with his greatest trial, than where else can? But ultimately, The Hurt Locker is about getting to know a new group of guys. We are as familiar with the characters as they are to each other, and with that, we initially hate some of their traits, but begin to appreciate them. Pretty incredible for a film that essentially goes nowhere.
By the time we get to the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the communications landscape has changed. Journalism during Vietnam revealed the true horrors of warfare, and then untrustworthy politicians during the Iraq invasions do little to reassure the public. The most memorable movie of the Gulf War, to me, is Three Kings, and it stars two former rappers, is about finding Saddam's hidden treasure and includes a sequence where Ice Cube throws a football with bombs attached to it at a helicopter to blow it up. The films that try to stab at the arrogant administration are preaching to the choir, and attempts to represent the futility of war end in embarassments like Home of the Brave, or give up and just become action movies, ahem, The Kingdom. When Iraq War films aren't stealing concepts from war films of the past, they are competing with the more attractive dialogue that is the internet. Suddenly the public is able to respond to each other directly, or their favourite newscaster than relying on dramatizations to impose their feelings on them.
So, finally, we get to The Hurt Locker. The first film about desert conflict, or more specifically, Iraq, that dodges most of these pitfalls. True to the nature of the film-going public, it was immediately criticized for these deviations. It's a film that doesn't go out of it's way to say a lot on a grander scheme. It's about a bunch of boys, and their lives, day in, day out.
The Hurt Locker is one of those films beneficial from repeat viewings. It has an irregular structure, there is no real rising conflict, no great climax, and no developed resolution. The another day, another dollar routine elevates it's sense of realism opposed to dramatics, which is suiting, considering it's a film about people, real people, even if it isn't directly. It maintains a middle ground between the tediousness of Jarhead and the incoherent slaughter of Black Hawk Down because it doesn't approach themes of psychology or horrific violence head on. What The Hurt Locker does approach head on is who these young men are, and how did they get there.
The bomb expert at the heart of the film, William James, is a fairly self-contained arrogant brat who jeopardizes the lives of his fellow troops because he gets more of a rush out of defusing bombs if the stakes are higher. Or so it seems. The film is brilliant at slowly developing it's characters without the audience really taking notice, leaving many people to misunderstand the movie as flat and without any development. James, like the bombs he defuses, is actually hardwired into the way he is. His talent is bomb defusal, not killing, that's not what he's there for. His arrogance is also sheer confidence, something that the other men in his unit can't share considering their are emotionally scarred from their last bomb expert being killed, and the constant civilian hawks that spy on every operation. Their experience develops their fear. James however, has a different past, and his fair share of wounds, but like some sort of tick, has an affinity for bombs. To eccentuate that point, James keeps a basket of bomb parts under his bed from every defusal he's ever done, which ranges beyond 300, and he remembers every one.
While I said that The Hurt Locker avoids the pitfalls of other modern war films, it isn't completely resistant to them, and to a degree war films depend on certain archetypes to be emotionally engaging. It's true that the other members of the unit, Sanborn and Eldridge, are nervous at every defusal because they witnessed their former friend blow up. It's true that the film ends on a note of dedication so strong, it's hypnotic, crippling any notion of a "normal life", but the film never lingers on these issues. Each man reaches his tipping point at one point or another in the film, if Iraq can't supply a man with his greatest trial, than where else can? But ultimately, The Hurt Locker is about getting to know a new group of guys. We are as familiar with the characters as they are to each other, and with that, we initially hate some of their traits, but begin to appreciate them. Pretty incredible for a film that essentially goes nowhere.