Two pictures to sum up a decade. One, a man encased in defensive armour, surrounded by explosive cannisters. He’s a stranger in a foreign land, an embattled American, homemade bombs weaving a spiderweb in the desert sands beneath his feet. The devices are all aimed in his direction like gigantic bullets, together forming a silent threat simmering just underneath the surface. Two, a man in a cavernous, overwhelming, colorful yet utterly sterile supermarket, faced down by hundreds upon hundreds of cardboard boxes, each containing processed and mass-produced snacks. More significant than the contents is the packaging – this is nutrition second, consumption first, and an empty, dissatisfying consumption at that. The bombs are existential threats; the boxes are not, and yet somehow their spiritual threat seems deeper. As Jason Bellamy astutely notes (in an observation which inspired the pictures and paragraph which open this piece), “In staring at all the cereal boxes on the shelf, he is presented with a multitude of choices, just as when he’s disarming a bomb, but his choices don’t mean anything. There’s no ‘wrong’ choice. It’s a reminder of how he misses the rush of duty, when every decision has a potentially life-altering consequence.”
Pick your poison. Sgt. William James has certainly picked his.
The Hurt Locker stands, solid and rather lonesome, at the end of the zeroes casting a glance over its shoulder, taking in where we’ve been. Locker may very well receive the film industry’s top award, a recognition not only of this fine film’s achievement but also of its significance: here’s an Iraq War film that was a success, that was critically acclaimed, that in this limited sense fufilled director Kathryn Bigelow’s rather head-scratching claim that the movie can offer “closure” for the conflict. It can’t do that, but it can offer closure (or, perhaps, a fresh beginning) in the ongoing cultural attempt to grapple with the meaning of the Bush era. By eschewing grand statements, The Hurt Locker hints at essential truths about a troubled time, one in which a lingering sense of unfulfilled duty and abandoned potential nagged at the wider populace.
We don’t meet Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner, in a truly impressive performance) right away. In a desire to subvert audience expectations from the get-go (and if that’s not warning enough, the spoiler-weary are advised to flee the scene), writer Mark Boal introduces us to the standard three-person EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) unit on the ground in Iraq: the solid and responsible Sgt. JT Sanborne (Anthony Mackie), the youthful, occasionally panicky Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), and the team leader Staff Sgt. Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce). Thompson is the kind of guy who would display a comfortable, good-humored ease, a quintessence of leadership, plunked down into the most hostile environment in the world – which is not far from the truth. He’s an anchor for both his men and the audience, which is why Boal dispatches him within five minutes. Thompson is the victim of a secondary bomb, planted specifically to take out any personnel attracted by the first, decoy explosive, triggered by a cell-phone wielding figure in a butchershop.
Thompson’s replacement is Sgt. James, but at first neither we nor the men under his command know what to make of him. Presented first in a dark room, listening to thundering hard rock as he pensively and intensely smokes a butt, the new team leader does not seem to be part of any “team” and has a funny notion of “leadership.” “You’ll get it,” James arrogantly informs Sanborne at one point, after the experienced sergeant accosts the new leader for taking unnecessary risks in their first mission. (James insists on defusing the bomb personally, launches a cloud of decoy smoke and pulls a gun on a cab driver, staring the Iraqi down until he backed off and is whisked away by soldiers – “If he wasn’t an insurgent before, he is now,” James drily observes.) Sanborne never really does get it – at one point he half-jokingly humors the notion of an “accidental” detonation taking the hotshot cowboy off their hands. Yet James is very, very good at his job – and while defusing bombs is his specialty, and his passion, he’s a handy spotman to Sanborne’s sniper during a desert ambush, in the film’s best sequence.
Close as the two men will grow, Sanborne remains perpetually perplexed by James’ gung-ho risk-taking – a trait which is demonstrated repeatedly. The film is composed of about eight or nine missions, of such intensity that they will inevitably draw the participants together, should they manage to survive. A single roadside IED leads to a daisy-chain cluster of deadly explosives; a car weighed down with bombs causes James to cast aside his protective suit and headset (“If I’m going to die, I want to be comfortable”); an accidental rendezvous with British mercenaries turns into a bloodbath and slow, meticulous shootout; the discovery of a little boy’s mutilated “body bomb” spurs a misguided revenge mission deep into a night-cloaked Baghdad neighborhood. In almost every case, there’s a fine line between James’ ability to extricate himself and his men from dangerous situations and his exacerbation of those very situations with forthright recklessness.
So when Sanborne finally expresses his incomprehension, James muses, “I don’t know. Do you know why I am the way I am?” The question sounds rhetorical, but it is not. Finally Sanborne shakes his head and responds, “No. I don’t.” Then we enter that supermarket, cutting adroitely from a bevy of angry children chasing a humvee to a shopping cart coasting down the asile – an edit as jarring in its own way as the leap from that bone to the spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a scene praised by just about everyone who’s seen the movie, particularly veterans, James feels completely displaced in this once familiar location, and just like that, indeed just as he said we eventually would, we “get” it. James’ ensuing speech, delivered to his infant son who can only coo in enthusiastic incomprehension, runs the risk of being too obvious yet somehow it resonates powerfully. Admiring his child’s ability to be delighted by something as simple as a jack-in-the-box, James warns the baby that as he grows up, he’ll begin to love less and less things. Maybe just one or two. “With me,” the melancholy soldier muses, “I think it might just be one.”
Cue the adrenaline-fueled conclusion: James’ triumphant return to Iraqi soil on another deployment – ambiguous because of what came before, but superficially thrilling and enticing. “War is a drug,” the opening caption informs us, but better yet is the title of the Chris Hedges book from which this quote is taken: “War is a force that gives us meaning.” To the extent that The Hurt Locker could be construed as openly political, it’s accusing finger is pointed not so much at war or the military, as at a society whose blandness and disengagement from contemporary challenges fuel the desire for some, any sort of outlet. Even this reading is implicit rather than overt; but the film does contain some more passive ideological threads too. Once the film entered the controversy-laden award season, the film’s generally blemish-free press gave way to doubts from several, often conflicting, directions.
Before we meet James or even his predecessor in the EOD unit, we are introduced to Iraq. “Introduced” may be a misleading word, implying familiarity: what we see is resolutely alien, a juxtaposition of traditional Middle Eastern garb and remote-controlled robots wheeling down crowded streets. The Americans, when finally presented, provide a relief, a source of identification for the viewers (of the Iraqis we mostly see feet and passing figures; we’re unable to get a hold on anything relatable). From then on, the Iraqis that hover on the film’s periphery are vaguely threatening figures – the movie must strike a balance, representing the soldiers’ often embattled point of view without turning the Iraqis into the cartoonish evil “enemy.”
The Hurt Locker achieves this remarkably well, impersonalizing but never dehumanizing the local population. In the marvellous 2006 documentary Iraq in Fragments, the American presence was a vaguely ominous, intangible reality; the figures in helmets and dark shades provided an overarching presence before which the central Iraqi figures scurried around for survival. The Hurt Locker takes the opposite perspective. While we never doubt the authenticity of the Iraqis’ emotions and motivations, we never see what they actually are. There’s a human reality there, but it remains resolutely unreachable. This has troubled those who want an Iraq movie to take in the whole picture; a criticism which has admittedly been limited – most reviewers, liberal or otherwise, celebrated what they saw as the movie’s apolitical hardheadedness (or even projected an antiwar message onto it). Still, it has grown louder as Hurt Locker competes in the Oscars sweepsteakes against a film that openly empathizes with an anti-occupation insurgency, however fantastical (Avatar is, incidentally, directed by Bigelow’s ex-hubby James Cameron). And it’s worth grappling with directly; how important is it for Hurt Locker to represent the Iraqi point of view in the war?
To my eyes, Hurt Locker delivers what Platoon did twenty years ago: whereas Oliver Stone provided a grunt’s eye view of that draft army, Bigelow and Boal offer up a personalized perspective on a professional volunteer force. Of course Stone, for all his dramatic liberties, was himself a Vietnam vet, and this leads us to another criticism lobbed at the film: that it fundamentally misunderstands the U.S. soldier, and particularly the EOD bomb-techs. Criticisms of minor or even major factual inaccuracies are largely beside the point. More pertinent is the general drift of these (again, minority, though relevant) critiques: that the movie transforms professionals into reckless daredevils.
Yet hardly anyone has discussed the film’s relationship to its indirect source: Mark Boal’s 2005 Playboy article “The Man in the Bomb Suit.” Before tackling The Hurt Locker, Boal had already adapted an earlier Playboy article, “Death and Dishonor”, into the Paul Haggis-helmed screenplay In the Valley of Elah. Though names were changed and characters added in the Elah adaptation, the central events of the story remained fundamentally the same. This time, Boal creates an entirely fictional story from a grab-bag of real events, moulding it around a character obviously inspired by Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver, an eccentric but extraordinarily accomplished EOD team leader, with whom the journalist was embedded in 2004. The article is an excellent read (and Boal himself is, incidentally, a lively interview subject) – at once more real and more moving than the resultant film, which is not to say it’s better, just different.
Still, reading about Sarver, there can be little doubt that Boal transformed the real-life figure, a complex man with an erratic home life but a flawless job performance, into an at once more sharply defined and morally ambiguous film hero. Onscreen, James’ bomb-defusing skills are never in question but his leadership seems lacking. Consistently placing his men in harm’s way, displaying poor judgement on repeated occasions, breaking rules and regulations left and right, James’ competence does not necessarily entail effectiveness.
Ultimately, it is difficult to weigh the good (defused bombs, though it’s implied the robot could have taken care of some of them) against the bad (a man down, a death made possible by James’ lingering on the scene, a home invasion that could have resulted in something far worse for both parties). James’ one attempt to do an unmitigated good deed – stripping an Iraqi of an explosive vest he’s been forced into – is rendered inert when the timing device runs out and the various locks prove insurmountable. This final episode only adds to the ovearching impression of futility, a futility whose allegorical implications seem clear.
The titular “hurt locker” by the way, is never mentioned in the movie. If it’s there it’s buried too deeply, tucked away like one of those bombs Sgt. James retrieves from their sandy cover. Boal’s original piece ends with Sarver bursting into tears, weeping in a confused outpouring of grief, longing, and remorse, torn between responsibilities he knows he can’t keep and the lure of a necessary and challenging job he loves, but whose draw leaves him uncertain. James’ pain is muted, twisted – his battle is not between a sadness and a joy but between feeling and not-feeling. The antitheses of “the things you love” are not “the things you hate” but the things you can’t feel at all.
In a drawer under his bed in the barracks, Sgt. James keeps IED pieces as souvenirs – “these are the things that almost killed me,” he declares proudly. The Hurt Locker is the portrait of a man, and a unique one – hardly universal in his particulars. Yet as painters once began to include landscapes in the backgrounds of their historical scenes, subtly exploring the world around them under the guise of a focused gaze, so we can begin to trace the contours of our one-time zeitgeist between the glossy endless corridors of the supermarket and the windblown sunstruck streets of Baghdad. Our own hurt locker has begun to be cracked open.
I can honestly say, Joel, that while I was unimpressed by The Hurt Locker this is an outstandingly lucid and insightful essay.
I thought the film tended towards a global didacticism (“If he wasn’t an insurgent before, he is now” is the kind of thing we have heard a million times from commentators and comes across as a masked political point or at least an empty political allusion), collaging all the emotions, all the controversies, all the arguments pro and con into one unsatisfying whole. I believe in some ways it tries to be a summation of a period of time rather than a film, a document first, a documentary second, a feature film third.
That conversation between man and son seems particularly insincere, a synthetic echo of real concerns.
I’m afraid I did not feel the tension of the film at all. I found it episodic where each predictable episode does not build upon the other so much as carve a rut. This is where the film fails for me. I didn’t care and I didn’t feel the rising heat or the throbbing heartbeat.
Sgt. James seems to me not far removed from the Hollywoodian hero archetype in a film that says the same things as others but in a dialled-down, slightly faux contemplative way. A renegade soldier, bombs, unseen enemies….it’s the same but with a realistic veneer.
I thought the film boring, short of ideas and momentum but you have observed the film very keenly and made me see things I never saw or considered. Thank you for sharing this. I look forward to the rest of the series…
Once again I must part company with Stephen on a film, but that is actually a good thing for this thread and for discussion. But although I did not find this tense and gripping film “boring” as Stephen did, neither did I embrace it to the level of America’s critics, who bestowed it with a plethora of critics’ awards as Best Film of 2009, but it’s current front-runner status at Sunday’s Academy Awards, after it’s British Academy Awards win last week. I have promoted this film since I first saw it, yet I balked at including it on my ten-best list for the year, so my enthusiasm is more of the “respect” variety. But there’s little question that the film is hugely popular with so many, and I think we can of course trace this to its topicality and it’s deft execution with an initially jarring hand-held camera.
I must say that while I don’t agree with Stephen here on this point:
“This is where the film fails for me. I didn’t care and I didn’t feel the rising heat or the throbbing heartbeat.”
…that I respect this as an astute description of what might prevent this film from connecting. I did feel the heat myself, but I agree that the film is rather episodic and sometimes predictable. But it has sustained viseral impact, which taken in the context of its urgency and it’s realism still has an arresting effect.
In any case, Joel has really taken out his magnifying glass, and in his typically exquisite manner has framed this film flawlessly, from that superb opening with the two pictures summing up a decade to the rightful assertion that “like PLATOON this film offers up a personal perspective on a professional volunteer force to this dead-on appraisal of the central character as “a sharply defined, ambiguous film hero.”
Your final metaphor with the painters is magnificent.
A hugely impressive review, Movie Man. What you say about Jeremy Renner’s performance is so true. If there were any justice he walk away with the Oscar. It’s a grity, contemplative portrayal with documentary resonance. The entire film has a edge-of-your-seat pace which literally takes you smack dab into the center of its embattles setting.
Thanks, guys. Stephen, actually in some ways I agree with you, and with Sam in a sense too: I didn’t fall in love with the film so much as respect it a great deal – and I did not find all the episodes equally tense though I think this may be down to me: many others seem to have been on the edge of their seat. I found some sequences to be stronger than others (the man with the bomb vest, the sniper duel will particularly effective) and very much liked the conclusion which Stephen felt pat – I can see it going in that direction but for me it did not.
I will say I watched the film twice, and on the second viewing I was less involved viscerally and even more admiring of the film’s overall structure (which, despite the episodic format, builds and varies to a point) and intricacies.
My most unqualified praise goes to Renner, whom I thought was superb with a part that probably could have gone pretty wrong. I still haven’t seen Bridges in Crazy Heart, but I wouldn’t at all mind if the young man walked away with an Oscar.
The film does make an interesting counterpoint to Avatar for a number of reasons, doesn’t it? (Not just pro vs. anti-soldier or Cameron vs. Bigelow but in terms of the aesthetic: though I haven’t mentioned it yet, I was very impressed that Locker’s effects were mostly in-camera, no distracting CGI. Still a bit Greengrass-y overall for my taste – though I’m not sure another approach would have been better for the material – but credit where credit’s due.)
Are you suffering from a long-term memory disorder? Best of the century, so far? Could these characters have been any more stock? I mean, it’s movie that has tension, but it’s only receiving the praise it is because it’s PC, and fits in as a highbrow movie for people who don’t watch a lot of movies. Weird.
J
Jason, please follow the link. “Best of the 21st Century?” is the name of the series, and the question mark is the key. I haven’t seen any of the movies I’ll be reviewing in the series until just before I write the review – I am following another list as my guide. Sometimes I’ll agree with their picks, sometimes I won’t, but it’s just a starting point.
Actually, many people feel the film isn’t PC “enough” given the depiction of Iraqis. I’ve disagreed with this elsewhere (and to a certain extent in this piece) but it’s worth pointing out as gripes about the film often seem to contradict one another.
Joel/MovieMan: This is a terrific piece, and I’m not just saying that because you flatter me with a quote. (But thank you.)
The Hurt Locker is one of those films where I find myself nodding my head both with its supporters and its detractors. “Stock characters”? Yes, to a point, though there’s an intimacy to Renner’s performance that I think reaches beyond the cliche. “Too John Wayne”? Oh, certainly, if the movie were indeed trying to be a “true” documentary account, but that label has been thrust upon the film in part because of its cinematic style; the Bourne movies use a lot of hand-held cameras, too, but those aren’t ripped for their dramatic liberties. I could go on.
I’ve seen the film twice in full and recently rewatched a few scenes for another piece I’m working on. I find that the good scenes (particularly the sniper shootout and some of Renner’s more personal moments, including the one’s back home) are the ones that stick in memory while the others drift away. In rewatching those scenes, sure, I spotted my old complaints. But even if Renner’s James is a stock character and a bit too much of a Rambo-like figure, he’s a character who believes in who and what he is. That’s powerful, whether the movie is somewhat reflective of real life, or if it’s, heck, Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
Hurt Locker isn’t my best picture of 2009. But it’s in the top five.
Jason, thanks – credit where credit’s due! That scene really seems to resonate with everyone; my cousin (who just got back from his deployment) mentioned that moment in the shopping center in particular, and I showed him your analogy, which he liked. As some other commentators have said, that final passage runs the risk of being too on-the-nose or trying-to-make-a-point. For some it may fall over the edge. For me it skated along it but avoided a spill and really hit home. It’s also such a great ironic twist given Bush’s “go shopping” advice. Here’s a guy who did so much more and yet he still ends up in the cereal aisle. One subtext – probably at least partly unconscious – of the film is that in Bush’s America, there were not many options for either serving one’s country or living up to one’s full potential – “with me, there’s just one” James says, and while this is partly an individualized trait (most people would be more involved with their own family) it does, I think, reflect a more common truth. That’s what I tried to get it in parts of my review, though I think I may have just articulated it more precisely here.
I was glued to this film in the theatre, and it lost nothing on the second viewing (on DVD). It reminded me of Gillo Pontecorvo’s ‘Battle of Algiers’ in it’s heart-stopping tension.
Interesting comparison. What’s curious to me is that I generally was not “on the edge of my seat” as I expected to be – the film did not have the overwhelming visceral impact I anticipated. Yet I still liked it a lot, and am kind of itching to watch it yet again.
This movie was incredibly unrealistic and downright disrespectful to the service members. If more people knew that, I bet The Hurt Locker would not even be in the discussion for Best Picture. They couldn’t get something as simple as the uniforms right!
Castor, there’s no doubt the film takes liberties with the facts – sometimes this may have worked at others I thought it too forced (the AWOL solo raid in particular comes to mind). I’ve spoken to soldiers who enjoyed and related to the film – or what parts they’d seen – though I’m also aware of others who felt the changes were too heavy-handed.
What’s important to keep in mind is that this is one of the first “big” movies to directly grapple with the soldier’s experience in the war, not just as one element of the plot, but as the central feature. I think that’s worth something.
I am really looking forward to look at the oscars in a few days. All the big stars at the red carpet, and really the female ones in their skimpy dresses ;). The movie Avatar shall be the biggest winner i think…
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I liked this film quite a bit at the theater, and just a little less on dvd.
Funny many think this film isn’t highbrow or intellectual enough; and fits in as a highbrow movie for people who don’t watch a lot of movies. Weird. (?) What’s weird to me is that people went into a Iraq War film directed by the woman who directed ‘Near Dark’, ‘Point Break’, ‘Blue Steel’, and ‘Strange Days’ (all fun, entertaining, well-made pop corn films) thinking something intellectual or politically significant was coming. If Bigelow tried for these things I think the film would have fallen pretty short (as some one points out the conversation between the son and Renner father), so I’m glad the things she doesn’t do well aren’t in abundance and the things she does (tension, and action) are.
I mean the scene in the desert, waiting out the insurgents with little water was worth my 9 bucks alone. One of the best scenes I saw in 2009.
Jamie – that was definitely the best scene in the movie. It is interesting how Bigelow’s reputation (and the expectations entailed) have skyrocketed with this film. I wish I had caught it in theaters – if it makes a re-appearance after it (hopefully, given the competition) nabs the Oscar, I will surely make a beeline to the cinema.
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MovieMan, just fyi but I bought this issue of Sight and Sound the other day that has a list of the thirty most ‘representational’ films (trends, styles, technology etc) of the decade. I respect S&S quite a bit, and I think the list is pretty good (disagreements aside):
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49593
I understand that your list is from another site, and you are tethered to those picks but I thought you’d find this informative.
I saw that issue the other day and perused it. Interesting stuff, though I’ve yet to read it in-depth. Nonetheless, the idea of organizing the films by trends is a compelling one. Looks like I’ve only seen about a third of them, but most of the no-sees overlap with TSPDT so I’ll probably be getting to them eventually. One that doesn’t overlap is United Red Army, which I really do want to see.
There are around 8-10 I haven’t seen, with ‘United Red Army’ being one of them (and I do really want to see it). Do I smell a dual ‘I’ve-just-seen-this-film-for-the-first-time-WitD’ post?
Interesting…
I also respect Sight and Sound Jamie, though I was surprised to see ADAPTATION, that Reygades film and Agnes Varda’s THE GLEANERS AND I. And I am lukewarm on a few others here, and lament the omission a some others that I thought would be a given. But I still appreciate the list!
Yeah I agree some of these I don’t really agree with, but I liked the preface in the magazine: “Yet the debate we had led to a list that we feel reflects the cultural significance of the films better than our own tastes; it took 30 titles to satisfy us that we’d touched on the important themes of the decade.”
The Greengrass fits this. I’m not a big fan by any means but he’s been a very important filmmaker of the 00’s.
I agree with you (if this was even the point you were hoping to make) that these lists should be more personal, but hey this S&S was a magazine wide poll, so many writers were involved.
But where’s Cronenberg? LOL
Indeed Jamie! I expected THE HISTORY OF VIOLENCE on such a short-list, not to mention FAR FROM HEAVEN, Aronofsky’s THE FOUNTAIN, Chereau’s SON FRERE and Van Sant’s ELEPHANT, as well as Despletchan’s KINGS AND QUEEN.
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