Filed under: Drama
With no explanation The Hurt Locker starts off amidst a moment of extraordinary anxiety. A U.S. bomb-squad task force is in the midst of weighing their options. Just a few hundred yards ahead of them on an abandoned Iraqi street lies potential instantaneous death. It is their job to approach it, disarm it, and return to base unscathed. This fear of death looms over the scene. Little noise is heard aside from light dialogue. Although the set is simple, the visuals are a complex blend of real and imagined anxiety. The camera, to great effect, is tremendously shaky. It helps to transport us inside these men’s minds. The barren landscapes all appear to be minefields, ridden with a million ways to die, and no expectation of forewarning. Visually, this is without a doubt one of the most immersive war films ever made.
After this first scene we get to meet the characters. After being made to feel each and every nuance of perturbation from their perspective, you’d think that there would be something equally engaging going on under the hood. Unfortunately, with lines of dialogue like, “Every time we go out it’s life or death; we roll the dice,” the characters we are made to care so much about quickly devolve into shallow stereotypes.
In between every action scene is one of lockdown dialogue. Character development is delivered this way in a form best expressed as loutish exposition. Each of the half a dozen characters has a single dimension developed. Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) is a seasoned bomb diffuser with his own reckless, yet no nonsense approach to his work. Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) is a sniveling coward who, after years in active combat, still winces at the thought of actual confrontation. Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) is a by-the-book ruffian who is frustrated by his new CO. As the movie progressed, these soldiers made startling, yet entirely predictable changes for no particular reason. The dramatic turning points play out like they were written for the original outline, unrelated to any other moments in the film. Such are entire subplots within the movie. James makes the occasional reference to his own mixed feelings on fatherhood. He then has three encounters with a young boy, which are meant to affect his feelings on his own son. This is the point where a change is supposed to be observable and a commentary on said change is supposed to be made. Any attempts at having the characters develop over the course of the film were inconsequentially trite.
As I watched The Hurt Locker, certain patterns began to make themselves painfully obvious. When two men are gathered together, they talk; when more then two men gather together, they are either fighting, about to fight, or about to blow up. It’s a pity that each incredible action scene was so easy to anticipate.
At some point even the incredible action turns into clichés, as well. In order to keep the tension climbing in an already adrenaline filled movie, extra elements needed to be added to later action scenes to make them even more intense than their preceding bomb diffusions. It becomes harder and harder to connect with the characters as their dealings become more and more overblown. Case in point: at some point Will James gets sucked into a revenge side plot. He pulls a sweatshirt on, and then proceeds to chase down run after his invisible enemies in the night. This action simply feels like it’s meant for a different movie entirely (perhaps one starring Daniel Craig). Later on there’s a moment where James’ squad approaches a fresh detonation. As chaos reigns around them, James tells his squad that through pure intuition, he knows that those parties responsible are still in the vicinity. Like a bad episode of Law & Order, James leads his men through grainy, poorly lit darkness, only to emerge at a fork in the road with three alleyways, a perfect number for three men to explore to ideal dramatic effect. These moments where James does something reckless and it turns out to be prophetic seem to ruin the entire point of the movie. One of it’s major theses, “war is a drug,” seems at odds when every time the supposed “junkie” tries to get his adrenaline fix, he ends up having some type of lucky success. Now multiply that times the hundreds of bombs our protagonist has allegedly diffused. Every time, William James, the reckless prophet comes out on top. That’s realism, folks.
Amid these terribly flawed scenes there is one that breaks from the format, and stands out as one of the most brilliant combat moments ever filmed. Ralph Fiennes shows up as a British contractor for a single scene in which one of the perfect paradoxes of war is on display. Although vigilant to the point of paranoia, James’ team is completely caught off guard by an enemy sniper. The scene plays out with the same suspense that is present in the opening scene, and is truly incredible to experience.
In the end, The Hurt Locker falls into the same trap as movies like Requiem For A Dream. Incredible technique alone might allow an audience to see through a character’s eyes, but if there’s little or nothing behind said eyes, then there’s not really a lot to connect to, is there?
-Paul Brinnel
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Paul, you make some good points here (I, too, loved the Fiennes/sniper set piece)…but I must disagree with your assessment of the character development and the “nothing behind said eyes” comment. Admittedly, there could’ve been more character development, but I liked how the film didn’t follow the traditional rules in this regard. I enjoyed the unpredictable nature of the soldiers’ emotional outbursts and how so much was revealed in their reactions and behavior instead of the cliched lines they spouted at each other because that is what they had been conditioned to do and think about themselves and war. I think there was plenty of development if you looked at what went unsaid in the film.
Here’s my full review if you are interested:
http://davethenovelist.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/a-review-of-kathryn-bigelows-the-hurt-locker/
Comment by David H. Schleicher
07.28.09 @ 9:27 pm
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