I only heard about The Hurt Locker this past weekend, after talking about Generation Kill with a friend. (Speaking of Gen Kill, see it now if you haven't. The box set is only $27 on Amazon.)
So I saw the movie this week having read no reviews, seen no trailers, or heard much about it except its critical acclaim and general topic.
I expected it to be sobering; I didn't expect to be so rattled. For the entire two hours and eleven minutes, you're never given a reprieve. There is certainly quality humor in here, but, far more than in Generation Kill, the levity is brief and heavy. I came out of the theater exhausted.
In The Hurt Locker we accompany three men of Bravo company, whose job it is to defuse IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices, if you don't follow the news) in Iraq. If the most tense moments of action movies come when a character doesn't know what bomb wire to cut, imagine doing that for a living. They are also involved in a long, harrowing sniper shootout and a very bizarre brawl. All the actors - in particular Jeremy Renner, who plays the bomb tech - are outstanding.
It is being hailed as the best action movie of the year, and I don't dispute that. But it is also the anti-action movie, to the extent that Hollywood doesn't make action movies like this. You won't feel thrilled, it doesn't headline major Hollywood names (although Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce, and (bizarrely) Evangeline Lilly all have brief cameos), and the violence is visceral, not a spectacle. You genuinely have no idea what will happen at a given moment.
So please go see The Hurt Locker. Just be ready for it.
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