Born to Be Wild

Review: The Hurt Locker

Thirty-eight days left in Bravo Company, and the explosives men are cracking wise. But when the bomb they set off takes out one of their own, in steps Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), a renegade with 873 diffused bombs to his credit. He stores parts from memorable explosives under his bed, one from the U.N., another that almost killed him. Right away, his recklessness gets on Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), who plays by the book.

Nerves run high enough in Iraq after the 2004 invasion; director Kathryn Bigelow wisely does not turn The Hurt Locker into a maverick-versus-status quo narrative. She and screenwriter Mark Boal realize that a great war film targets no enemies beyond that inevitable, any-day-now feeling. For Sgt. James, war is adrenaline, the only way to experience life. Diffusing an explosive-laden car, he removes his safety gear ("If I die, I want to die comfortable."), striking with the bomb an intimacy he knows nowhere else.

A few cameos, some foreshortened, keep the stakes high. For James, the journey is less about endurance than addiction; he can't love his family back home in the same way. Despite the day-to-day responsibility as an insurgent, Sanborn envies his partner's risk-taking. Mackie offers strong support in the film, notably in his quiet desperation at the end: "I'm done. I want a son. I want a little boy, Will."

The Hurt Locker rides on Renner's shoulders, and he swings between wild and sedate with ease. As James ebbs in and out of paranoia, his inner turmoil flares up and recedes quickly, like bits of shrapnel piercing his surface cool. Lest I make this sound too serious, it's really a knuckle-biting action movie. Bigelow captures the electricity of each new bomb, within the grim streets of invaded Baghdad. The film can be a disjointed series of episodes; rather than building to one singular climax, it takes a near-documentary approach to the humor and anxiety with which these men pass each hour. The threat of death looms, but never as heavily as the fear of survival.