Artist The Hurt Locker
In case you missed the film in its original theatrical run—and shame on you, incidentally—here’s another chance to catch Kathryn Bigelow’s viscerally charged Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker, which looks to clean up in year-end awards nominations. Though it concerns the bomb squad members that risk their lives defusing IEDs, it wouldn’t be accurate to describe the film as merely a paean to American courage and derring-do. There’s a kind of madness that comes with the job, too, where the hair-raising, red-wire/blue-wire stresses of day-to-day life can make some soldiers punch-drunk on adrenaline. Jeremy Renner plays one such soldier with a dangerous verve that recalls Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now.
Updated 10/21/2009
