The Hurt Locker

2008 was nearly twenty years ago as of this writing. As I watched The Hurt Locker for the first time since it was new, I had to remind myself of that fact and just how much has happened in the world in those years. When this film was debuting at Cannes, we were going through the final months of the presidential election that would usher in eight years of the Obama presidency. Osama bin Laden was still alive, and we were hearing a lot about al-Qaeda in the news, tied to any number of terrorist acts throughout the world. It was a very uncertain time in our world, much like it is today for very different reasons. Obama ran on the campaign slogan “Change We Can Believe In” and “Yes We Can”. He also projected “Hope” and a way to move forward out of the tumultuous and seemingly endless war his predecessor, George W. Bush, had waged in Iraq. 

The Hurt Locker, conceived and written well within the W. Bush presidency, has that jaded feeling of despair and hopelessness many were feeling during those years. But it also taps into another emotion, one that those who fought in other major wars also experienced: the inability to reacclimatize into home life once they came home. Not all troops faced it, but enough that it has become the subject of so many films and books over the years. This is a mindset and a reality that those of us who were never in the military during one of these wars have a hard time grasping. We tend to think of war as a hell that we would be eager to put behind us and cannot understand why anyone would sign up for a second tour of duty, yet many soldiers in Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq, among others, did exactly that. 

Mark Boal, a freelance journalist, was embedded with an American bomb squad for two weeks during the war in Iraq. He wrote of his experiences in an article for Playboy Magazine entitled The Man in the Bomb Suit, detailing what our soldiers were experiencing over there. Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow was already familiar with Boal’s work, having adapted one of his articles already into the short-lived television series The Inside back in 2002. The two kept in touch while he was deployed with the soldiers in Iraq, emailing each other throughout the experience. Kathryn and Boal used these experiences to help craft a fictional story of their own, using the realities of these soldiers. 

Kathryn and Boal were intent on showing the world things you wouldn’t find on the news, imagery and emotional depth that was not part of your local broadcast of CNN. She was particularly fascinated with the kind of man who would not only volunteer for such an assignment but show enough aptitude to be chosen for bomb disarmament duty, approaching hazards most everyone else was running away from. She had no interest in politics or attacking George W. Bush, just in showing what was really going on with these men in uniform. Because of that, this is a far more timeless film than something like Michael Moore’s character assassination of Bush in Fahrenheit 9/11. While there have been some in the service that have clapped back at the accuracy compared to their own experiences in Iraq, The Hurt Locker is still looked at as an inside to the mindset of these brave men who risked their lives in Iraq, often a dozen times or more daily. That kind of stress changes a man. 

The film opens on a mission failure. Team Leader Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson (Guy Pearce) is killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) is triggered by an Iraqi insurgent with a cell phone. Squadmate Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) blames himself for the death because he failed to kill the man with the phone. 

Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) is brought in to replace Thompson. His penchant for going off script and defusing bombs by hand without communicating puts him at odds with Sergeant J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). This comes to a head when James insists on disarming a car bomb despite it taking too long. He removes his headset and flips Sanborn off, causing Sanborn to openly suggest fragging James to Eldridge later on. 

We follow these men through a series of bomb extractions, a sniper attack that kills several men, and even a body bomb that has been placed inside someone that James thinks he knows. When he is unable to save a man who has been forced into a bomb vest, James decides that he needs to leave the service and have a son with his wife back home. But when his rotation is over and he does return home, he feels unfulfilled with the routine of day-to-day life and longs to return to Iraq, to the only thing that he truly knows and loves. 

Kathryn and Boal’s look into the mindset of a bomb disposal expert in Iraq really tries to get us inside the head of the type of man who does this for a living. For the most part, it is successful, too. Jeremy Renner’s Oscar-nominated performance carries the film in a way that nothing he has done since has matched. This is a man who is reckless, risking his life unnecessarily when his assignments are already dangerous enough on their own. There are times when he seems heroic and then there are times when he seems foolhardy, like he has a bit of a death wish. There is an adrenaline rush that comes from brushing up against death and surviving, and he seems to live off of it. He mentions that he has successfully defused more than 800 bombs in the course of his duties, so we know he is good at his job, but you don’t get that far on skill alone. Luck plays a part, too, and for a while, we are not sure if we are going to see that luck finally run out. 

Kathryn uses stunt casting to great effect here to get this across. The two biggest names on the marquee are Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes, whose shared screentime amounts to about ten minutes. When Fiennes first reveals himself as a British contractor, he is playing up his character like he is in some 50s adventure film, overacting a bit to sell the part. Both Pearce and Fiennes are killed in spectacular fashion, playing up the shock value that such big names are dispatched so readily. It’s a strategy that worked and was utilized to great effect by Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho and Wes Craven in Scream. It’s an effective tool for catching audiences off guard and giving them a sense of unease. After all, if a big name like Ralph Fiennes can be killed off, no one is safe.

What works best, though, is how we get into the psyche of James, to the point that we can understand what is going on in his mind without a single expression or word spoken. There’s a moment when he thinks someone he cares about is dead. When that person shows up again, James is blank-faced, says nothing, and doesn’t even acknowledge that the person is trying to speak to him. It’s a brilliant bit of acting on the part of Jeremy Renner made all the more so by how accessible his mind is leading up to that point. Likewise, when he is finally back home in the States, he stands in an aisle at a grocery store just staring blankly at all the boxes of cereal available to him, and we can see how much he feels out of place here. Without even seeing it happen, we already know that he will be going back to Iraq on his own accord. That world makes more sense to him than this one. 

So, yeah, this film succeeds in helping us understand the mindset of someone who comes home from a hell that is the war in Iraq only to volunteer for another tour of duty. We may not agree with that mindset, putting his life in extreme jeopardy and risking it all, including his family back home, but we understand it. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal have created a bit of fiction that hits home for so many people, so much so that one individual felt he should be compensated for it. The courts disagreed and dismissed that claim, but the fact that he felt it was close enough to his own experiences in Iraq speaks volumes. Kathryn also has the distinction of being the first female director to win an Oscar as a director, a first after nearly 80 years in the Academy. She would soon be joined by Chloe Zhao. The Hurt Locker is not an easy watch, but it felt like a necessary watch back in 2009 when it saw its mainstream release. Like a lot of World War II, Korean, and Vietnam veterans, many Iraqi war veterans find it difficult to speak about their experiences. Films like this can help others understand what their loved ones went through. It may be fiction, but it is rooted in real events and real people. That alone makes this a must-watch and a truly powerful picture.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Greg Shapiro, and Nicolas Chartier (won)

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (won)

Best Actor: Jeremy Renner 

Best Original Screenplay: Mark Boal (won)

Best Cinematography: Barry Ackroyd

Best Film Editing: Chris Innis and Bob Murawski (won)

Best Original Score: Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders

Best Sound Editing: Paul N. J. Ottosson (won)

Best Sound Mixing: Paul N. J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett (won)

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Release Date: June 26, 2009

Running Time: 130 minutes

Rated R

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Evangeline Lilly, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Guy Pearce

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow