The Hurt Locker (2008)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  7 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal's 'The Hurt Locker,' is a brilliant examination of the effects of the Iraq war on its American soldiers.
  
  The story follows a bomb disposal team as they diffuse bomb after bomb and risk their lives every time. At the start of the film their boss is killed, and he gets replaced with the reckless Staff Sergeant James (Jeremy Renner). He's already jaded by years in the army and is cavalier with his own life, treating the whole thing like a video game where each level is a challenge to overcome. His assistants Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Geraghty) are far more scared of losing their lives and being left behind in the desert with noone to mourn them, and they become increasingly frustrated with James' tactics.
  
  It's interesting to see how the war effects soldiers differently, but the effects are only felt because Bigelow brings the environment to life so viscerally. We constantly see the army bulldoze through the chaotic streets like they're strolling through a zoo, paranoid of the locals as they look on angrily and suspiciously, then the repeated bomb diffusal scenes are wrought with tension, and often a level of carnage and bloodshed that seem to be ripped straight from the pages of hell.
  
  But then the film ends with James returning home, and the cavernous distance between the war and the quiet mundane of his domestic family illustrates how one can become addicted to hell, and feel out of place in normality after experiencing it.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It does get a little repetitive after a while. Plus, there is precious little examination of the effects of the Iraq war on its victims, which is a far much more important story to be telling...
  
  VERDICT: 'The Hurt Locker,' brilliantly brings the hell of the Iraq war to life to examine the effects on its soldiers, just not its victims.

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