Unlike most who were watching the Oscars last weekend, I had actually seen The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow’s double winner for direction and best picture. I got lucky with my Netflix queue and had it in hand by the end of February, so I feel obligated to share my review.
Ms. Bigelow has an extensive directorial resume which includes a number of TV police procedural episodes. Also, during the ‘90s, she made a couple of flawed but memorable action pictures. Point Break starred Patrick Swayze as a bank robbing adrenaline junkie, with Keanu Reaves as his FBI nemesis. Featuring big surf, sky diving, and buddy bonding, the final scene of Swayze surfing into the oblivion of a 100 year storm off the Australian coast while the long-haired Reeves looks wistfully out to sea is an indelible portrait of longing and wish fulfillment, two hallmarks of romantic male youth.
Strange Days, a millennial dystopian near future exploration of cyber snuff tapes, features Ralph Fiennes in a simple chase movie, enlivened only by the sci-fi elements and the always mysterious Juliette Lewis.
In The Hurt Locker, Bigelow dispenses with most of the trappings of a standard Hollywood film, such as an expository introduction, indicative music, stable cameras, and character resolution. She even kills off a couple of the bigger stars she’s sprinkled into the film, just adding to the pervasive sense of unease. In location, story, word, and deed, we do not know where we are, just like the bomb defusers she follows for a month in Bravo company in the early days of Iraq War II.
The result, however, provides a superior drama of both the work, and three men who do it. Jeremy Renner plays Sgt, 1st Class William James, assigned to the Bravo IED Hummer after the previous Sgt. realises a second too late where the danger is coming from. He eschews the high tech little robot tank they’d been using, with middling success, in favor of a camo-coloured Michelin Man suit topped by what seems to be a diving bell. After 800+ successful defusings, he figures he’s either good or lucky, and it doesn’t really matter to him which.
Anthony Mackie, previously seen as a rapper in Notorious and 8 Mile, is Sgt. J.T. Sanborn, the cautious foil to Brown. Serving as the equivalent to a sniper’s spotter, he tries (and usually fails) to keep Brown on task. A climatic fire fight in the desert has them swapping roles, and serves to bond these rivals, epitomized by the subsequent scene of them bashing each other oblivious while drunk in celebration.
Brian Geraghty is Spc. Owen Eldridge, who is the trembling baby of the bunch, lulled into action by the mundane tones of soldier speak around him – give him his orders, and he calms right down. Back on base, however, he seeks help from an Army shrink, who ultimately shows he knows less about combat and its resolution than the charges he is supposed to be healing.
Bigelow’s is clearly trying to present a real-life portrait of IED disposal and the surrounding conflict, without bias either for or against the war. She is so agnostic that Cheryl, about half way through the film, turned to me and asked, “Why are we even there?” The Hurt Locker provides no answers, pro or con, simply a portrait of three men at work, work which could kill them at any moment.
[Now, is it really the Best Picture of 2009? Among the ones I’ve seen (Up, Avatar, Inglorious Basterds, District 9) it does not stand out. All five of these pictures are equally entertaining, and stylistically unique. I suspect it is better than Blind Side and Up and Away (both made in the standard Hollywood mold and style), and I’ll withhold judgement on Precious and A Serious Man until I see them, but I would guess they would fit in with the first five I mentioned.]