Movie Review: High stakes, heartache fill ‘Hurt Locker’

Finally, the battle to bring an effective and engaging Iraq war movie to the screen has been won.

Director Kathryn Bigelow ("Point Break”) and journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal succeed where so many filmmakers have failed with "The Hurt Locker,” which works both as an adrenaline-pumping action movie and as a thought-provoking war film.

It opens with a quote from The New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges: "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” But that’s as preachy as Bigelow allows "The Hurt Locker” to get. Instead, she uses her flair for jaw-dropping action sequences to clearly show the perils of war in the movie’s stunning opening moments.

The film follows Bravo Company, a three-man unit of the Army’s elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad. In summer 2004, Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are battle weary, emotionally scarred and desperately hopeful that their final 38 days in Iraq will pass relatively quietly.

Their hopes seem dashed when Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) takes over the team. In dealing with the homemade bombs (aka Improvised Explosive Devices) planted along the grimy Baghdad streets, James swaggers into the fray with little use for safety gear, painstaking procedures or bomb-handling robots. Accustomed to careful, by-the-book leadership, Sanborn and Eldridge are quickly convinced that James will get them killed.

As they (and the audience) get to know the quiet, drily funny James, Sanborn and Eldridge have to question their intial assessment. Is their new leader a cocky maverick addicted to the adrenaline high or a canny professional selflessly willing to sacrifice his safety to protect others? Fortunately, "The Hurt Locker” isn’t that simplistic or clear-cut, and Renner’s low-key, pitch-perfect performance makes his character by turns heartbreaking, maddening and likable.

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