Boom bang a bang bang (The Hurt Locker (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	The Hurt Locker (DVD)
Date:	27/08/09 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Unbelievably tense

Disadvantages: A few silly sequences towards the end

A film only review. The Hurt Locker goes on general release in the UK on August 28th. DVD and Blu-ray releases are scheduled for late December.

This new film about the experiences of a bomb disposal team in Iraq is genuinely impressive in a way I really wasn't expecting. It's directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who previously gave us classics like, er, Strange Days and K-19: The Widowmaker. But somehow Bigelow's always given the impression that she was capable of much better films than she's managed to make. This - a low-budget film in a genre that hasn't done too well commercially lately (Iraq is perhaps too raw a subject to be wildly successful) - might be the one that puts her into the big league.

We follow a three-man American military bomb disposal unit as they go about their terrifying business in Baghdad (this is set in 2004). The three guys are well-worn movie types - the maverick who seems likely to get everyone killed; the sensible, by-the-book, uptight one; and the slightly twitchy obviously-going-to-crack-up one. While it seems unrealistic to have a group set up so obviously to clash with one another, a group of stolid professionals doing the job sensibly would make for a less interesting movie. The film is based on what screenwriter Mark Boal saw when he was embedded with a bomb disposal team as a journalist. The situations the team find themselves in consequently feel very, very real.

The thing that works so well about this is the suspense. There's an ever-present feeling that something catastrophic could happen. Even supposedly safe scenes, well away from war zones, are laden with menace. The opening bomb-disposal sequence is almost unbearably tense (mainly because opening scenes *have* to go wrong in these kinds of films). To get the full benefit you probably need to see this at the cinema, as the sound - heavy rumbling military hardware and so forth - is central to the tension. Frankly, it needs to be - forgive me for using the technical term here - bastard loud. If it's quiet it won't create the necessary queasy sensation of fear in its audience, who ideally will be trying to push themselves as far back into their seats as possible, convinced the whole world is about to explode.

The film is very episodic. Although there's a storyline of sorts in the character development, the plot mostly revolves around the number of days left on the squad's rotation, which tick down cruelly slowly as the film progresses. The situations they have to deal with are usually intense, occasionally gruesome, and on one occasion heartbreakingly sad. It's not always a pleasant film, but nor is it unremittingly bleak in the manner of, say, Come And See (the greatest war film ever made). There are, sadly, a few incidents that seem profoundly unlikely, which do let things down in the film's final third, but it pulls it together for a decent enough conclusion.

It looks excellent, absolutely convincing in pretty much every way - the low budget has made no difference whatsoever. It was filmed in Jordan, but to my uneducated eye it looks exactly right (my main point of reference, sad to say, is Call of Duty 4). The music is perhaps a bit unsubtle (we can tell when things suddenly turn dangerous, because a low, ominous note appears on the soundtrack). But the explosions, when they come, are superb (the occasional bit of slo-mo can be forgiven) and the few combat scenes seem real enough (the difficulties of sniping at people a mile away are shown in minute detail).

The acting is very good - all the characters are brought to life convincingly by the three largely unknown leading men, Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty. Jenner perhaps shines brightest as the maverick adrenaline junkie, having something of a young Bill Murray about him. Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce have good cameo roles. Christian Camargo as an army psychiatrist bears a distracting resemblance to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, which unfortunately makes it difficult to take him seriously.

The film is carefully neutral about whether the war is a good or bad thing. War, as a concept, is bad, but it doesn't lecture us about whether the Iraq war itself is specifically bad - this should help its box office chances. There are lots of shots of Iraqi civilians watching the bomb experts at work, but they're filmed in a way that leaves it for the viewer to decide if they're swarthy, freedom-hating monsters or oppressed victims of America's evil jackboot. It's not a film about whether the US should have gone to war; it's about three guys with an unusually dangerous job. If it has a message, it's probably contained in the 'war is a drug' quote that precedes the film.

This is probably the best new film I've seen this year, and it deserves to be successful. It's worthy enough to feel like you've done your soul some good by watching it, but it's also a damn good piece of extremely tense entertainment. If it hadn't gone a bit silly towards the end I'd call this a masterpiece. As it is, it's just very, very good.

Summary: A good film about explosions in Iraq