- It was Aristotle who claimed that "we make war that we may live in peace." Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker presents an alternate thesis best summarized by the film's opening quote: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." Taken from war correspondent Chris Hedges, those words certainly describe the life of Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner). Simply put, James' job is to disarm explosive devices for the U.S. Army in Iraq. Such devices take a huge variety of forms, from cylinders cleverly disguised in the dirt, to cars filled with explosives, to the truly abhorrent "body bombs," which are exactly what they sound like. In some instances, these charges can be detonated or disarmed by a remotely controlled robot. In other cases, they require a specialist like Sgt. James to don an armored bomb suit that looks like something an astronaut might wear. I'm suddenly reminded of still another quote, this time from Chuck Yeager: "In the business we're in you only get to make one mistake, and, unfortunately, you don't get to learn from it."
- When Sgt. James isn't wearing the suit, he gives the initial impression of a regular enough guy. He watches DVDs, plays video games, and blares heavy metal music, just like plenty of other twenty-something males. In civilian life, James might have belonged to the extreme sports crowd. But then again, something about his personality makes it difficult to imagine James as a civilian. Maybe it's the fact that he volunteers to wear the bomb armor even when it doesn't seem necessary to do so -- after all, one would think that the suit would be an absolute last resort. Or maybe it's that box he keeps under his bed, containing "stuff that almost killed (him)." In addition to the humorous inclusion of his old wedding ring, the box is chock full of wires and detonators from some of the 873 bombs he's disarmed over the years. Wait, did he really say 873? Hmm...it would take years even for a "wild man" like James to rack up that many disarmaments. Just how long has Sgt. James been at war?
- While James' battlefield bravado may seem like "hot shit" to his superior officers (including David Morse, in an excellent cameo), his behavior is less appreciated by his fellow comrades-in-arms. In the eyes of Sgt. J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), James is a reckless thrill-seeker whose hotdog stunts only increase the chances that people will get killed. To a consummate professional like Sanborn, such irresponsible behavior is absolutely infuriating, and the two end up at each other's throats more than a few times. The other, younger member of the team, Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), reacts to James with terror rather than anger. In one of the film's best scenes, Sanborn casually mentions to Eldridge how "these detonators misfire all the time" just as James is approaching a cache of unexploded bombs. Detonator in hand, it's pretty clear what Sanborn is proposing and equally clear that he would go through with it if not for Eldridge's hesitation. You know things have gotten bad when your team leader is your worst enemy. Despite James' many faults, however, he's not some mustache-twirling evil villain. After all, this is a man who routinely risks his life in the line of duty and who even undertakes a hopelessly misguided rogue investigation into the apparent death of a young Iraqi boy (Christopher Sayegh). Maybe terms like "good" and "evil" don't apply in war.
- The film's best scenes are those in which a certain quiet tension is slowly brought to a boil. In several such instances, James marches off to defuse some elaborate explosive contraption while Sanborn and Eldridge are left to keep a close watch on their surroundings. There's usually a crowd of Iraqis nearby, most of whom appear harmless enough, but even seemingly innocuous items like cell phones and video cameras gradually take on a sinister cast. In another similar scene, the trio must keep their guns trained on a distant pillbox that may or may not still contain a sniper. The film is all about waiting for something awful to happen, and it occasionally does. By the film's end, Sanborn and Eldridge each find their own way out of the war, but James isn't so lucky. To him, the civilian experiences of grocery shopping and playing with his son feel as sterile and lifeless as the surface of the Moon. James only really loves one thing, and it isn't a normal life.
- There are a few other cameos by Ralph Fiennes, Evangeline Lilly, and Guy Pearce.
