INSIDE HELL
The Hurt Locker has already gone down in movie history for fetching the Oscar for its director Kathryn Bigelow, who is the first female director to have won it.
It is one of many films that have come out in recent times, criticizing the role of the US in the Middle East (this week’s other release Green Zone attacks the whole WMD fiasco), but it also makes a larger anti-war statement, and what the artificial machismo of the war zone does to the psyche of people —and never mind which side they are on (an Iraqi boy who calls himself Beckham plays an important part). The film looks disturbingly real, mainly because Mark Boal, who wrote the screenplay, was with a bomb squad in Baghdad.
Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) is a team leader with the US'a Army's Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit in Iraq, having replaced a predecessor (Guy Pearce) who was killed on duty. James does his job of defusing bombs with expertise, precision and certain reckless pride. He works in high-risk conditions, almost relishing what he does, under the nose of the ‘enemy.’
Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), heads the support team that accompanies James; it is his job to provide cover to James and give him constant audio feedback inside his heavy protective suit. The third member of the bomb disposal squad is Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) and like Sanborn, he too disapproves of James’s swaggering rashness.
The suspense is unbearble, which keeps the audience on tenterhooks. This is a war film that depends not just on slam bang action, but by building layers of tension, and never losing sight of the details.
It is, what would traditionally be a man’s movie, but Bigelow doesn’t let gender get in the way. Her point of view is humane, her observation surgical-sharp and her portrayal of the war zone has a carefully-recreated ‘everydayness’ – people, soldiers, even animals, simply go about their lives under the shadow of death. This is what blows away the viewer… and probably won the film so much appreciation and major awards.
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