Review

Review Date: 12-July-09
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Hurt Locker (2009)

I found varying definitions of the unfamiliar term "hurt locker" on the Internet:

A metaphorical place you go when you are painfully unsuccessful in a competitive event.

A place where you might find yourself after a long night of consuming alcoholic beverages.

A colloquialism for inflicted physical or mental suffering (e.g., "putting someone in a hurt locker").

Kathryn Bigelow's film The Hurt Locker does include aggressive sports, drunkenness, and multiple instances of suffering, but none of these definitions captures its particular poignancy. The movie is a documentary-like (though fictional) look at three U.S. soldiers who comprise a bomb squad in Iraq. After the death of their commander, Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) try to adjust to the style of their new leader, James (Jeremy Renner), a cocksure daredevil who trumpets his arrival with a marked disdain for tension. It is immediately apparent that the quote which opened the film — about how war is a drug — pertains to him. James actually enjoys walking out on a street in occupied foreign territory with hostile natives all around, uncovering bombs in trash heaps and diffusing them with his bare hands.

The action follows the team as it weathers explosions and gunfire amid the strange, almost ludicrous realities of America's current war. It also examines how they deal with their situation and each other. Sanborn is a professional who uses the reliability of protocol to keep himself going and finds James' off-the-cuff bravado unsettling. Eldridge, the junior member of the group, struggles with a compulsive fear of death and regards James with mixed awe and perturbation. It becomes clear by contrasting the men that the leader possesses what the others lack: where Eldridge is afraid, James has great courage; where Sanborn has nothing to fight for, James has a family at home. Yet for all his superior coolness (well communicated by Renner), the pain of the title is laid at James' feet. His decency, brought out by an Iraqi boy whom he befriends, is no match for his need to take risks, to wallow in the rush caused by proximity to annihilation. While his comrades look forward to going home, he knows that nothing there will satisfy him. He is therefore locked in, prisoner of a pursuit which will someday get him killed. It hurts both him and us to know that he has no choice but to strut towards this fate.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.