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Blown away: Raw emotion found in 'The Hurt Locker'

By VR Bryant

As I continue to trudge through this year's Best Picture nominees (seven down, three to go), it occurs to me that I've been looking at things all wrong. I didn't cotton well to the news that the category was expanding, but really for no other reason than that I fear change in general.

Doubling the number of nominations has indeed welcomed in some riff-raff - films that, at least by my account, were given recognition simply because they stood out in their respective genres. It's running more like a dog show than the Oscars now, with movies like "Up" and "The Blind Side" winning best in breed and getting invited to the final round, despite the fact that they don't really stack up.

So yes, there's a larger disparity of film quality in the field now. All it really does is give the superior pictures more victims when it comes time to flush the chumps.

My latest catch was "The Hurt Locker," a story of a circa-2004 U.S. Army tactical bomb squad unit at the mercy of a war with no clear enemy or lines of battle. The three-man team, comprised of two security personnel and a technician/team leader, finds itself in an array of situations that are at once unbelievable and all too real.

I would argue that, most of the time, a film that is built around a historically accurate framework is more capable of striking a chord than one comprised primarily of fantastical or imaginary content, or at least benefits from the real-world context.

Perhaps it is because the war in Iraq is still so fresh and familiar that "The Hurt Locker" seems so visceral. Still, a tremendous amount of credit goes to Best Actor nominee Jeremy Renner and director Kathryn Bigelow, who is up for the top award in her field as well.

What really works here is not unlike what made "The Road" so moving. There's nothing separating the audience from the actors. It's a simple story propped up by a massive heap of character development. Practically every minute of the film's runtime (two hours, 11 minutes) is dedicated to fleshing out the primary three elements of the story - the men of Bravo company.

Renner, who last I saw 15 years ago in some slop comedy called "Senior Trip," is cavalier, but not over the top. There are certainly elements of his character that flirt with being cliché (Ranger with a death wish, wife and son at home to whom he can't relate, lights up a smoke after every bomb disarmed, like he just finished having sex), but the performance that Bigelow draws out of him makes those otherwise hackneyed devices seem very real. Pretty impressive for a woman previously best known for directing "Point Break" (1991).

One scene in particular finds the team pinned down by enemy fire after coming across a team of British contractors - something akin to a hit squad. I'll be careful to not give anything away, but suffice it to say that the gravitas of the situation reaches a new high here, and that special feeling of having forgotten that you're watching a movie creeps into your psyche. And it is good.

"The Hurt Locker" might not win Best Picture. Renner and Bigelow may not take home their respective awards either. But they probably should. No gimmicks here. No pretense. Just a really, really good film.

Originally Published: February 10, 2010

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