The Hurt Locker

Editorial

Kathryn Bigelow says she pitches her films in "heightened emotional states". For her latest, and best, adventure in extremis, she couldn't have found a more heightened state: bomb-disposal experts plying their knife-edge trade in the inferno of the Iraq War. Indeed, the film itself does little more than follow the daily shift of confronting suspected IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), terrifyingly ramshackle contraptions built from old shells and hidden amid the wreckage of Baghdad.

Unlike the tirade of recently failed Iraq-themed efforts, the geopolitics of the Middle East are not on Bigelow's mind, nor are the straightforward slings and arrows of the modern combat flick. She's all about visceral participation. The result is a spare, unyielding masterclass in the racking-up of tension to the point where thrill distorts into exquisite agony. For every threat, the ground is surveyed, the dynamics assessed, putting you into the epicentre of the crisis.

We soon gather that hero/villain/fuck-up hybrid Staff Sergeant William James (Renner) is addicted to the head-rush of communing with these piecemeal death-traps. He's like the brooding son of Colonel Kilgore, minus the cowboy jingoism, and his nerveless gung-ho attitude will stretch relations with his fellow team-members, anxious greenhorn Eldridge (Geraghty) and gruff, pragmatic Sanborn (Mackie).

James keeps attempting human basics — bonding with a local boy, trying to discover commonalities with his team mates — but he's too on edge, sucking up adrenaline like a vampire, to overcome his own nature.

The Hurt Locker, such a bruising, brilliant experience, can be viewed as the culmination, to date, of Bigelow's heightened MO. It may lack the grandness of great war movies, but Bigelow has envisioned a stunning microcosm of hell that asks the most nakedly important question of all: will they make it?

Ian Nathan