Review of The Hurt Locker (2008) by Harry W — 05 Apr 2013

In a realistic manner that Hits the viewer and captures their minds faster than most war films could dream of doing,The Hurt Locker makes excellent use of silence in it's storyline to project the intensity of the story without displaying breakthrough musical techniques to do so, and so the experience becomes simple and memorable for it, much like in Witness or Animal Kingdom. It becomes all the more realistic through the intense silence and the great cast in their excellent portrayal of realistic war dynamics, and so the buildup to the climax of this moment is one of the most powerful in war film history. So by the end of the intro, it's quickly cemented that The Hurt Locker is going to be a very powerful war film.

For some viewers, the atmosphere may be worn down by the slow pacing, but the simple fact is that The Hurt Locker is one of the most character-driven war films to have existed in many years, and is one of the best to dramatise the war in Iraq.

One interesting thing is the way that Jeremy Renner reminds us that his character is still human through mere use of costume change, in the sequence where he pulls a gun on a DVD salesman and returns to the mans house, and the entire sequence removes the audiences thought of him as a soldier and it becomes solidified that his character is merely a very strong human. However, in a stronger manner to lean to his characterisation is Jeremy Renner's fine performance.

He levels humanity with determination and supplies a powerful breakout lead with just the character needed for The Hurt Locker. The entire cast is good, but Jeremy Renner carries them all very well and just provides excellent realism to it all.

But the praise must be given to Katheryn Bigelow, not just for her decision to cast unknown actors and for handling the Iraq war so finely, but because of the inspiration from the fact that she is the first woman to win the Academy Award for best director and the fact that she proved how a woman may handle such a subject as well as anyone else which surely would disprove many chauvinistic thoughts of people worldwide. And it doesn't even change things because she's just a person who made a fine film, one so fine that it won the Academy Award for best picture. And the fact is, her knowledge of handling intensity and great action as we've learned from her action flick Point Break, it's obvious she's just the perfect director for a war film and delivers even more substance to the story than you could expect. Her handling of The Hurt Locker was just immaculate, and so she's the reason that it's all too memorable.

So The Hurt Locker was a great simple look at characters experiencing the Iraq war, and it's one of the finest looks at it that the film industry can provide.