The Hurt Locker ***

Directed by Katherine Bigelow.
Written by Mark Boal.
With Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Evangeline Lily
Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, Christian Carmargo, Suhail Aldabbach, Sam Sprell.
Released July 2009
Seen in Theater

I liked this film - a lot! But I'm looking for that something extra, that something that will put this film over the top into 4 star levels, and I can't. It's directed by one of my favorite directors - Katherine Bigelow, who also directed one of my all time favorite films "Near Dark", about punk rock cowboy vampires.

The movie's intense, in that there is a lot of tension. I am on the edge of my seat almost the whole time, especailly during the combat scenes. The action scenes were well shot and the acting was well....acted. So perhaps I should give a summary so that I can explain the "tension" idea a little more.

The Movie centers around a bomb squad that defuses IEDs in Iraq. Every moment in the easy half dozen scenes is frought with worry or concern. Of course one worry is whether the bomb will go off. But there are also hostile Iraqi's observing who can shoot at them or ignite the bomb themselves. Add to this the arrival of a new bomb expert that has a gung-ho cowboy attitude and the tension mounts even more. His colleagues are sure that they are endangering not only himself, but their own lives when he refuses to follow protocol.

So I''m looking for some thematic ideas here, and there is only one that Bigelow makes fairly obvious. That is that these men are addicted to the rush of adrenalin. The new bomb expert is the one who epitomizes this idea. That's why he behaves as he does. Of course war is hell, but that doesn't really need to be mentioned for its obviousness. That's it. Basically this is a film about men in combat and how it feels - and in that sense, the film does quite well. But it doesn't really seem to have anything more to say.

Bigelow is know for her extraordinary lighting effects. In this one, it's a scene in which the men are investigating a bomb after it had exploded. It is night time and it looks like Dante's inferno with flames and fire in the night sky. There are some powerful shots in this scene.

Bigelow being a woman and an action director, usuallly has strong female lead. All the major characters here are all men. No strong female lead. I wonder why. It could have just been the material, but there are woman in the military, so certainly she could have included one.

Here's a clip.