Part 1
Whether she meant to or not, Kathryn Bigelow has given us a new American classic. I’m divided as to whether I think she and the others involved in this project knew how good The Hurt Locker was going to be while they were making it. At times it feels as though everyone involved thought they were making just another action movie. Certainly Bigelow’s filmography (Point Break, K-19: The Widowmaker) leans in that “standard action fare” direction. Okay sure, there’s more going on in some of her movies than just straight-out shoot-em-up, but nothing like The Hurt Locker.
Don’t get me wrong. I love some of Kathryn Bigelow’s other movies. Point Break is tons of fun. Near Dark is one of my all time favorites. I don’t even remember what compelled me to watch it in the first place, but I loved it so much I watched it 3 times in 2 days. Since then it’s become an annual favorite in our house (It KILLED at Horror Movie Fest last Halloween.). It’s finger lickin’ good.
All the same, the supporting cast of Aliens as cowboy vampires is a world away from The Hurt Locker. I suppose the supporting cast should have been a hint. Guy Pierce and Raiph Finnes are both great in their roles. But ‘stars’ are not what this movie is about, and anybody whose face you recognize finds the exit door pretty quickly. This clever inversion of the Star Trek ‘red shirt’ gag* is a really nice touch in this movie, and really emphasizes the ‘everyman-ness’ of American soldiers in the Iraq War.
The Hurt Locker tells the story of specialist bomb diffusers in Iraq in 2004. Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge’s (Brian Geraghty) previous Staff Sergeant was killed in a bomb explosion, an event that haunts the pair. Their misery is exacerbated when they meet their new Staff Sergeant, Wiliam James (Jeremy Renner). James is a great action hero character, an heir in the lineage of Dirty Harry and Han Solo. Problem is, he’s in the wrong movie. Han Solo is great in a fantasy, not so good in a ‘real world’ scenario. Instead of wanting to be Han Solo, we see how Han Solo hurts the people around him, and especially how he puts those around him in unnecessary danger. James brings a harmful insanity and carelessness into Sanborn and Eldridge’s world that may end up sending them over the edge themselves. The tension between these three is the crux of the movie and relative unknowns Renner, Mackie, and Geraghty do an amazing job pulling off the intricacies of their strange and fluid relationship.
James becomes such a source of hatred for his team that they actually contemplate the possibility of killing him and making it look like an accident. One scene about halfway through the movie changes everything. When they are attacked on the road to Baghdad, they end up in a tense, hours long showdown with Iraqi insurgents. This scene is the best in the movie for two reasons: 1) In real time, this scenario would last for hours. It still feels like it lasts hours, but in the movie it feels tense and exciting the entire time. 2) Capri Suns. This is the moment James becomes a real person and not just a ‘badass’ caricature. As the showdown begins to fatigue these guys physically and emotionally, James calls for a round of Capri Suns. It’s a stupid, little thing, but it shows a lot of heart and consideration and ultimately earns James the respect of his team. Of course, this really just ends up making things more difficult for his crew in the long run. It would have been so much easier to hate him if he were a caricature.
Magic Moment: Barry Ackroyd’s cinematography. Digital moviemaking is here to stay, and Ackroyd’s work in The Hurt Locker (a combination of digital and real film) goes a long way toward developing a unique aesthetic voice apart from ‘traditional’ film. George Lucas pioneered digital cinematography, but there was nothing in his movies that set it apart at all from traditional film aesthetics. Whereas Lucas and his crew approximated the look of film using digital technology, Ackroyd and Bigelow allow their aesthetic decisions to be informed by the visual content of the world of today. YouTube, digital streaming, and other aesthetic mainstays of the new digital ‘real world’ are not entirely absent in the visual palate of The Hurt Locker.
We are just starting to see what effect digital cinematography will have on the movies. Michael Mann and his cinematographers are just the most obvious, showy example. Right now, Bigalow and Ackroyd are some of the most tasteful. This technology is the future, and I know we haven’t seen the best these new tools have to offer yet. YouTube, Ipods, digital video, and streaming technology (you know, how you watch Colbert Report) are literally changing the way we see. And we’re only on the cusp. Now it gets interesting.
* Everyone knows about ‘red shirts,’ right? Whenever the classic Trek TV show crew beamed down to an alien planet, they would bring a ‘no name’ extra with them. That extra would without fail be wearing a red shirt, and would without fail be the first to die when the crew faced danger, allowing Kirk, Spock, and the gang to live to fight another day.
Part 2
Long, long ago, back in 2009, I was at the movie theater and saw a trailer for a new movie called “The Hurt Locker.” It looked really good. But! I was at an ‘indie’ theater, and though the movies screened there are frequently good or great, the trailers they play are frequently for shit movies. So I didn’t see it. Then it started getting really good reviews and I thought, “This must be everyone’s ‘pet indie’ this year,” and I still didn’t see it. Then people started talking Oscar nominations. People were still talking about this movie 8 months after it came out. So I rented it. And it was great. Really great. Can’t-get-it-out-of-my-head great. And I wonder, why didn’t I just see it when I first saw the trailer and it looked awesome?
I’m loath to admit it, but I must fess up. I think I let Netflix, Amazon, and other digital ‘trend learning’ technologies do the choosing for me. They seem to be able to predict my taste better than I can myself. I wonder how much I allow something like Netflix to decide my taste rather than augmenting and assisting it. I should have the guts to see a movie that looks interesting to me before it is validated by Netflix or even by some other reviewer.
I hearby pledge to follow my movie nose wherever it takes me! If I have to sit through hours of dredge, at least it won’t take me 8 months to see The Hurt Locker.