Writer: Ezekiel Lee Zhiang Yang

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Watch this if you liked: "Jarhead”, “The Kingdom”, “Rendition”

More "Jarhead" than "Black Hawk Down", less-than-industrious female director Kathryn Bigelow returns with a technically accomplished, frighteningly realistic and morally challenging war movie called "The Hurt Locker". Devoid of all the in-your-face drama and intrusive music that war movies so often shoot down your throat, this compact adventure about a self-conflicted Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit with the U.S. Army's Bravo Company is a festival favourite that can win over commercial audiences if only given the chance.

We are led to Iraq to follow headstrong Sergeant First Class William James (a composed leading performance by Jeremy Renner) whose passion for bomb diffusion goes beyond the call for duty. The man doesn't even care that the previous soldier in his position (Guy Pearce) was killed in similar operations but his subordinates certainly don't take kindly to this maverick manoeuvres. The 'safety-first' Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and the nervous Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) form a bond with him but war and death mean different things to each of them. As they go on more and more daily operations involving the disarming of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), we are brought uncomfortably close to the action and learn to see what life is like as a soldier.

"The Hurt Locker" goes for impact both in terms of physical bombs and human drama - but not in the conventional ways we are often served with in recent films. The explosions are dusty and powerful (obliging a slow-mo scene every now and then) and the characters are complex but their actions, singular. They don't need to talk about what they're doing or why they're doing it - they just do it. This gives the audience a lot of time to think and contributes towards the appeal of the movie.

Reportedly, producer James Cameron said this about his ex-wife's film: "I think this could be the Platoon (1986) for the Iraq War." The movie is from an acclaimed source material - best-selling 2002 novel 'War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning' by a New York Times war correspondent. It even opens with a quote card from it - the rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug. You won't hear many complaints about this neat effort, unless you're sorry Evangeline Lilly from TV's "Lost" only gets about five minutes of screen time.


Cinema Online, 18 October 2009