The Hurt Locker is not a plot-driven film. I mention this only because I've seen too many moronic posts (on various websites) decrying its lack of a plot, and how terrible this is...apparently only to those persons who cannot wrap their heads around the idea of a character-driven film. And The Hurt Locker is a character-driven film, charting a bomb squad unit's final 38 days of its Company's current deployment. This is also a war movie, but one that leans on suspense over action, one that focuses on individual soldiers and not the politics of war.
People have also complained about the film's use of the shaky camera, and although I am not a proponent of this cinematic technique, I do think it works well in the context of a war movie, especially one that seeks to embed the viewer into the unit as it goes about the nerve-wracking job of defusing bombs. After all, the script comes from a journalist who was embedded in Iraq with a bomb squad unit. It seems only natural that the film be shot this way.
Bigelow does a great job of capturing the environment: the suffocating heat, the arid wind choking with sand and nagging flies. She knows how to ratchet up the tension in the film until it becomes so unrelenting that the viewers are literally holding onto their seats. Despite some cliches and heavy-handed moments, Bigelow delivers a riveting and thoroughly engrossing film.
The Hurt Locker
Score: 79%
Can't wait to see it, although it's highly unlikely it'll ever come here. I need to MOVE!
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