A tense, suspense-driven war thriller centering on a bomb squad that thrives on unpredictability, even though its shaky-cam excesses and lack of a traditional narrative may wear thin at more than two hours.

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The action woman is back with The Hurt Locker.  Kathryn Bigelow, the director of Point Break (1991) and Strange Days (1995), returns to form with this critically acclaimed war picture after the flop of K19: The Widowmaker (2002).  

Filmed in Jordan, The Hurt Locker is set in Iraq during its recent American invasion a few years back. It follows a team of three U.S soldiers whose daily job is to defuse unexploded bombs or to tackle bomb threats. 

In this team, there is one specialist who suits up in protective gear and goes right up to the bomb to nullify its threat while his buddies provide defensive cover for him from a distance.

The Hurt Locker builds upon the principle of suspense filmmaking and nothing else.  The fear of a bomb exploding remains one of the most surefire ways to induce queasiness in cinemagoers. Here, Bigelow employs an array of film techniques to intensify that fear, cranking the tension to, at times, unbearable levels.

In the opening scene, she shows her action credentials in perhaps the film’s most outstanding set-piece – a slow build-up of suspense which accumulates in a massive, heart-thumping explosion.  With such an impressive introduction, it takes a great director to follow up and maintain the interest of viewers.  

Bigelow manages to sustain the suspense for most parts, but because of the lack of a driving plot, her film becomes less interesting over the course of two hours.

“There’s enough bang in there to send us all to Jesus. I’m gonna die, I wanna die comfortable.”

Unlike most war films, The Hurt Locker has no story but only a series of chronological accounts of men in endless bomb-threat scenarios.  Perhaps the only form of ‘narrative sense’ that could be observed is that the film intends to show the futility of war through its unpredictability.

How does one preserve his sanity in such a vocation?  “Don’t think about it,” says the lead character James (Jeremy Renner), who has defused more than 800 bombs in his career.  

In a fairly ironic scene late on, James, having had to choose a box of cereal for his family, becomes overwhelmed by the sheer number of different brands available on the shelves of the supermarket.

For once, he is stunned because he has ample time to make a decision and he ‘thinks about it’.  “Is my decision the best?  Did I choose correctly?  Hell, I’d rather defuse a bomb than choose a box of cereal!” his blank stare seems to suggest.

Bigelow’s overuse of the ‘shaky’ camera becomes nauseating after a while, even though it is essential to a certain extent in creating the docu-realism feel, which plays a part in the heightening of the suspense.  And then there is the use of slow-motion in a couple of shots, which look out of place in a film emphasising the rules of time and reality.

Nevertheless, The Hurt Locker remains one of the better war thrillers of the year, not that there are many to begin with.  I foresee possible Oscar nominations in a rather stacked year.  

Grade: B

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