THE HURT LOCKER

The whole time I was watching Kathryn Bigelow's latest film The Hurt Locker (2008), which is an interesting film on many levels, I kept asking myself: Why am I not on the edge of my chair, why am I not excited? For me, this film was not a nail-biting, anxiety producing experience, but it was intelligent. Bigelow has crafted what I perceived as a 'quiet film' - sure, there were sounds of gunfire, weapons, machines and exploding bombs, but she used the Iraqi desert and powerful, distant images of women in Burka's as quiescent space that contrasts dramatically with the thunderous sounds of potential danger. Indeed the people of Iraq, along with the persistent and unforgiving arid desert are quiet witnesses and victims of unfolding events. We are invited as we contemplate the environment in which these American soldiers are drawn, to what might be occurring in the mind of the primary protagonist Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner). Like a typical hero in Western genre, James, the bomb disposal expert is the hero who must face danger alone. Since he must physically engage with the bomb device in order to disarm it, he is called upon to adopt a cool and detached demeanor and create a space between his body and the individuals he's trying to protect. I must admit that early on in the film I thought it was just all too easy for James who is blase, irresponsible and very cocky, but as he said in the film he'd disarmed over eight hundred bombs. Bigelow makes us think about the psychology of soldiers who volunteer to be part of a bomb squad and who get an adrenaline rush each time they put on the protection suit to walk into the 'dead zone' - a place that is too close to the bomb and too far away from a position of safety. But we can't help but think that this might be similar to the adrenaline felt by a suicide-bomber willing to blow him or herself up in order to kill or maim others, or the bomber in the film who doesn't want to die for Islam, but who has been forced to wear an iron cage filled with explosives around his chest. Just when we think that James lacks emotional involvement, he shows that he can be just as affected as members from his squad when he discovers the mutilated and stitched body of a young boy whom he befriended, who has been turned into a 'body bomb'. He leaves camp and undertakes an irrational and fruitless search for the boys killer. It was at this point in the film that I began to see the real point that Bigelow was aiming for. This was not just about what happens in war - the operation and strategic deployment of units, communication and cooperation between members of a squad, the pointless deaths and destruction, all drawn out in the film. It was primarily about the impact of war on soldiers, how they and their families are forever changed when they return home and how some, like William James can only know that they are alive when they are close to death.