Set in 2004 when the Iraq War turned into a daily conflagration of improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—seen in the hydra-headed forms of roadside, car, truck, suicide and body bombs—the film focuses on the surreal, hair-raising experiences of Delta company, a US Army bomb defusing unit charged with what has to rank as one one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming or safely detonating IEDs.

Defused IEDs

Controlled IED Explosion

(For those unfamiliar with the term, an IED is essentially a homemade bomb composed of conventional military-grade explosives that uses a variety of consumer electronic components and methods of detonation. IEDs deliver devastating blasts that can sometimes wipe out a whole city block or more and have been deployed extensively by insurgents fighting the coalition forces in Iraq. It is estimated that IEDs have been responsible for 40% of coalition deaths from 2003-2007, not to mention countless Iraqi civilians.)

Staff Sgt. William James, Jeremy Renner in a tour de force performance, takes charge of Delta company after the untimely death of its previous leader but is almost immediately at odds with the other two members, Sgt. J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). Unorthodox and cowboy-like in his approach to defusing bombs, James throws both caution and protocol to the wind, opting instead for what seems like pure improvisation. In any profession, there are those who are masters of their craft but remain quite simply great technicians; then there are others who elevate the craft to an art form, who are like magicians, dazzling with their skill and inventing their own methods. James is the latter, and from the very first bomb he defuses—when he disappears into a smokescreen and into his own internal world— you get the sense that he’ll either come through brilliantly (just in the nick of time) or blow himself and everyone else to smithereens.

In any profession, there are those who are masters of their craft but remain quite simply great technicians; then there are others who elevate the craft to an art form, who are like magicians, dazzling with their skill and inventing their own methods. James is the latter, and from the very first bomb he defuses—when he disappears into a smokescreen and into his own internal world— you get the sense that he’ll either come through brilliantly (just in the nick of time) or blow himself and everyone else to smithereens.

As the film progresses, with each scene upping the ante over the previous one in terms of sheer danger and suspense, the characters of the three soldiers are thrown into sharp relief. Eldridge, though holding it together, wasn’t made for war and has a hard time dealing with the deaths he witnesses; he teeters on the edge of a breakdown and needs to talk with a military psychiatrist who is so out of touch with the combat soldier’s reality that he doles out absurd, platitudinous advice like “this doesn’t have to be a bad time in your life.” Sanborn, made of much hardier stock, is a well-trained soldier used to following regulations because, in his experience, rules and caution save lives. In contrast, James appears to be a loose cannon, an adrenaline junkie who seems to thrive, quite literally, on the risk and thrill of defying boundaries and doing things his own way. While both Eldgridge and Sanborn fall apart emotionally under different circumstances, James barely seems to bat an eyelash after even the most harrowing situation. It’s as if he’s wired differently, or completely at ease with the fact that he walks a constant tightrope between life and death.

William James (Jeremy Renner)

J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie)

Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)

On the surface, William James’ character is an updated but quintessential portrait of the American Hero. He’s a man we’ve seen on-screen for decades played by James Cagney, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen—wise-cracking, cool under pressure, tough-as-nails and a bit unhinged. Jeremy Renner may have a boyish face, but his charisma and screen presence are, at first sight, pure bravado. Yet what becomes clear as the film progresses is that Renner has the depth and sensitivity as an actor to give his portrayal of masculinity the complexity of some of James Cagney’s finest performances—as opposed to, say, John Wayne’s one-note swagger. Far from being emotionally cold, James shows sensitivity toward both Sanborn and Eldridge at critical moments in the field, displays affection for an Iraqi boy who sells bootleg DVDs, and makes a desperate attempt to save the life of an Iraqi man with four children who is forced to wear a suicide bomb vest. While all of the characteristics signs of male toughness are visible on the surface—cigarette smoking, a preference for heavy metal music, nonchalance in the face of danger, flagrant violation of military protocol, and an inability to communicate with his wife—the film shows a different facet of James in almost every scene. To his credit, Renner peels away layer after layer of James’ persona until you understand that even the most hardened military type you might want to judge at first glance is a complex, living, breathing human being.

The irony of the character is that he is in touch with his sensitivity yet fulfills his highest calling in battle. In one of the most fascinating sequences in the film, we see James back home after his tour of duty. At one point, he’s standing in a large supermarket and is more disoriented than he’s ever been in Iraq. When his wife asks him to pick up some cereal, he stands in the breakfast aisle for a long time looking at an endless selection of cereal boxes, unsure of which one to choose. For me, this is the most powerful moment in the film because it suggests that the society we have created at this point in late capitalism (as represented by American suburban life) is so far removed from the basic survival needs of the human animal, so banal in its surface (and empty) forms of consumer complexity, and so sanitized, numbed and devoid of anything remotely threatening or unpredictable, that the theater of war in a battered, sun-scorched Iraqi city might just be preferable because of the stimulation it offers. In fact, the contrast between the Iraq scenes—shot in a frenetic, gritty style full of hazardous situations and a constantly shifting palate of characters—and the scenes of James at home in the US is so stark that, as a viewer, you would rather see more of the danger of battle than the prosaic and unremarkable non-events of everyday life in America.

the society we have created at this point in late capitalism (as represented by American suburban life) is so far removed from the basic survival needs of the human animal, so banal in its surface (and empty) forms of consumer complexity, and so sanitized, numbed and devoid of anything remotely threatening or unpredictable, that the theater of war in a battered, sun-scorched Iraqi city might just be preferable because of the stimulation it offers.

It comes as no surprise, then, that James chooses to return to Iraq for another tour of duty, and for this reason many will see The Hurt Locker as the story of a soldier addicted to war. In fact, the film easily lends itself to this interpretation because it begins with a quote by the war correspondent Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug…” New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis takes this view, saying the film is “an analytical if visceral look at how the experience of war can change a man, how it eats into his brain so badly he ends up hooked on it.” A.O. Scott sees things differently, recognizing that “James is something else, someone we recognize instantly even if we have never seen anyone quite like him before. He is a connoisseur, a genius, an artist.” To that I would add that, rather than being a war addict, James embodies the archetype of the warrior: He’s alive, alert, living out his destiny while at war and his “genius,” as Scott rightly calls it, thrives within that context. Yet, paradoxically, he’s not the warrior who was born (or simply trained) to kill, but rather the one whose vocation it is to save lives by dancing with death to defang the violence of the bomb.

But despite the film’s complex depiction of the main character, its examination of the dangers and stresses of war, and a surface reading of the film as a story of addiction, many viewers will think it glorifies combat because it’s an apolitical war film. At an advanced screening I attended at the Museum of Modern Art, director Kathryn Bigelow was asked the inevitable question why she chose to make an apolitical film and set it in this particular conflict. She explained that she wanted to stay very close to what Mark Boal, the writer of the film, experienced when he was an embedded reporter with a bomb squad in Iraq in 2004. This meant not only setting the film in Iraq but shooting it in the Middle East (Jordan), keeping the story confined to the experiences of the soldiers and, rather than staging for the camera, using a highly realistic, documentary style of hand-held shooting to capture the action. (In addition to four Super 16mm cameras, she used a high-speed HD Phantom camera that captures 10,000 frames/second for scenes depicting the pressure effects of bomb impacts.) With a carefully constructed audio track that blurs the boundaries between score and sound design, and pitch-perfect editing, the result is a hyper-realistic, fly-on-the wall experience that puts you right in the midst of the action.

With a carefully constructed audio track that blurs the boundaries between score and sound design, and pitch-perfect editing, the result is a hyper-realistic, fly-on-the wall experience that puts you right in the midst of the action.

It’s this realism that will, no doubt, strike some viewers—especially desensitized youth raised in a media saturated culture permeated with violence—as being an exaltation of the thrill of warfare. Certainly, the film’s flawless execution, high impact audio-visual experience and its focus on the one character who seems largely immune to the nerve-crushing pressures of war seems, unintentionally, to glamorize war. In this regard, perhaps the extraordinary strength of the film’s style is also a kind of Achilles heel, in much the same way that Sam Peckinpah’s use of slow motion violence, in Straw Dogs but especially in The Wild Bunch, frequently (but inadvertently) glamorized action he slowed down to provoke the audience and impact them viscerally.

A more insidious oversimplification may come from viewers with a political stance who might miss the character nuances and see the film as a style-over-substance missed opportunity to speak out against war. When considering the shaky foundations of the Iraq War—the fact that it was prosecuted on the basis of falsified evidence, greed, lies, fear mongering, and full-throttle media collusion—the criticism would be justified if there weren’t already a slew of films, particularly documentaries, that have addressed various aspects of this politically motivated and ethically reckless war effort. Personally, I’m not a fan of apolitical war films because I view wars conducted by rich, industrialized nations today as a collective sickness at best and delusional lunacy at worst. But what I responded to in The Hurt Locker, and what I think is valuable, is understanding the surreal, insane experience of soldiers we have sent to war, soldiers who are frequently young and inexperienced, under-trained in terms of understanding a different culture in whose midst they find themselves as the enemy, who are used as tools and cannon fodder by power-grabbing, profit hungry politicians, and who return shell-shocked and psychologically fragmented, if not maimed or disabled for life. James is the exception to the rule; soldiers like Eldridge and Sanborn are the norm. They are the ones who find themselves in “the hurt locker,” military slang for a place of complete and ultimate pain.