This late in the game, with all the awards buzz surrounding "The Hurt Locker," it seems a little pointless to back into the fact that it's a fantastic movie. So let's just get that out of the way. "The Hurt Locker" deserves every bit of the enormous amount of praise it's received.
Director Kathryn Bigelow has crafted a masterful examination of the emotionally transformative effect of day to day life of war-time bomb defusers, for whom death is just a trip wire away.
Some crack under the pressure; some follow the rule book to the letter, just trying to survive their tour. Screenwriter Mark Boal's characters run the gamut. Easily the most memorable, however, is Jeremy Renner's Staff Sgt. William James.
James has literally become addicted to life-or-death risk, and Renner's performance ricochets wildly between somber introspection at home to an almost primal delight in the field. He approaches each lethal situation with the subtlety of a drunk cowboy, and it's exhilarating to watch.
The rest of the defusing squad, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, are strong as well, representing more reasoned, human approaches to bomb defusal, but the passion and iron horse fury with which Renner commands the screen is tough to compete with. That is, of course, why Renner is in the running for for Best Actor.
Ms. Bigelow's film is an excellent example of how to establish a red-lined intensity early on and maintain it (in this case for more than two hours). That, in and of itself, is not necessarily a praiseworthy attribute, since films like "Lakeview Terrace" and horror films do much the same thing. What distinguishes "The Hurt Locker" is the subtlety with which that intensity is achieved.
Whereas the screech of strings, a bump in the dark or over-the-top gore can raise the tension and set nerves on edge, those are cheap parlor tricks, so much smoke and mirrors. "The Hurt Locker" manages, with surprisingly little outright violence, to convey a tenseness and an ominous sense of pervasive danger.
Simply through cutaways to silent, perhaps culpable, onlookers of Renner and his squad at work, the film raises the pressure to the point that some scenes will fray your nerves.
Although there's less gore than might be expected, the film doesn't pull any punches. People die, and it's horrific, but those moments only serve to heighten the unease.
With any film that takes place during a contemporary American military conflict, there's a risk of the director using viewers' sense of patriotic obligation as a crutch for a poor narrative. Bigelow waltzes this razor thin line with aplomb, however, demonstrating a keen sense of balance between pandering to sentiment and showing the imperfect lives of all-too-human soldiers.
You don't necessarily love Renner or even understand his perspective, but that's entirely the point. "The Hurt Locker" brings viewers eye to eye with a lifestyle most can't begin to fathom since the only way to understand Renner is to willfully face danger with his Cheshire Cat grin. That it can illicit even the slightest bit of empathy to such an alien way of thinking is a testament to the strength of "The Hurt Locker's" storytelling.
E-mail Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com