There is a scene—it appears in the film’s trailer but bears describing one more time—in director Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War film, “The Hurt Locker,” where a soldier pulls a web of electrical wire out of the dirt and suddenly finds himself surrounded by a ring of land mines.
Thousands of miles away from that imagined moment, in the comfort of a movie-theater chair, your muscles clench, just for a second. The soldier’s claustrophobic breathing takes on an unbearable intimacy and the muscular technology of his protective armor is exposed for what it really is: a prison against every rational impulse to run away.

“The Hurt Locker” understands that a combat film’s first allegiance is to the adrenal glands.

Set in the height of the Iraqi insurgency, “The Hurt Locker” embeds itself into the lives of a three-man bomb disposal unit. Their job is to defuse those IED’s (improvised explosive devices) that have become the iconic weapon of Middle-East warfare. It is, as the film is quick to point out, insanely dangerous work.

The team leader has recently been blown to bits and his replacement, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), isn’t soothing anybody’s nerves by his cavalier approach to defusing bombs. At one point he approaches an abandoned car suspected of being loaded with explosives. He kicks at the trunk until its lid pops open exposing an impressive stash of ordinance. James’ response is to pull off his armor suit and dump it at the feet of his teammate, Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). “If I’m going to die,” says James, “I want to die comfortable.”

Eldridge isn’t reassured and neither is Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). Their job is to secure the area that James is working in. That roughly translates into trying to figure out which Iraqi civilian is holding the cell phone that will detonate the bomb.
When do you shoot? Who do you shoot? Should you shoot? Those questions stand between the soldiers and salvation from being obliterated in the blink of an eye.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s agenda isn’t political. She seems disinterested in the moral implications of the war. Her focus is existential. Like Steven Spielberg in the first twenty or so minutes of “Saving Private Ryan,” she wants to transport you out of your comfortable theater seat and into the skin of these soldiers. In the process she has painted what may be the most eloquent portrait of the Iraq War to date.

Barry Ackroyd’s cinematography bleaches out the Iraqi landscape creating a palpable sensation of heat and dust. Meanwhile, Bigelow employs aggressive editing that jumps between different points of view. The camera is searching, like the soldiers, for an answer, the one thing that will give them some control over the situation. But more often then not there are just more questions: too many civilians, too many cell phones, too much left up to chance. The genius of the film is its immediacy. It wraps the tension of the moment around you and allows for no escape.

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Rated R
Four Stars ****