Review: The Hurt Locker

Review: The Hurt Locker

Rating: ***

Nonna's Rating: $$$

Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

As The Hurt Locker begins, a quotation on screen reads "War is addictive." Viewed superficially, that sentence explains everything that happens in this movie, but the words are deceptively facile. As this intense film unfolds, we notice just how complex, disturbing, and volatile are the motivations and emotions of the men who diffuse bombs for a living in Iraq.

By no stretch of the imagination can I say I liked this film. I admired the taut storytelling, the realistic portrayal of the insanity of war, but I could never watch it again. For the most part, it avoids the trap of making an anti-war film filled with seductive violence. The focus is not on killing; it is on the minute to minute possibility of being killed. When Jeremy Renner enters the film as SFC William James, the bomb defuser on the squad, he seems to be a loose cannon destined to be cannon fodder. Quickly, we learn how adept and smart he is about disarming munitions and about disarming the emotions of the men who support him. The heavily padded protective suit he wears, however, is as illusory as the team's infrequent moments of peace and solitude: James' naked fingers are always, always exposed.

Our involvement in the war in Iraq has saddened me from the time the Bush White House first began to talk about it. This film underscores the waste of it all: as someone once said, "No combat soldier ever comes back unwounded."

Nonna's Ratings:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price
$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it