“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”
--Chris Hedges, New York Times
It’s sort of sad that so many people will remember “The Hurt Locker” for all the wrong reasons. But that’s kind of what happens when a co-producer of a film e-mails Academy Award writers to attempt to dissuade them from voting for another movie (“Avatar”) for best picture. Sure, Nicolas Chartier issued a public apology, but he’ll always be known as the first nominee ever to be banned from a movie award ceremony.
That backdrop unfairly draws away from what was, unquestionably, a tremendous movie. Filled with testosterone, unfathomable violence, stereotyping questions, intensity and slow-motion cinematographic techniques, “The Hurt Locker” shone an unflinching light on war in the Middle East.
From a casting perspective, it has been reported that the casting of relative unknowns was very purposeful, to help protect the authenticity of the landscape of war. It was odd to see Guy Pearce (Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson) introduced as team leader—only to see him killed off in about 10 minutes. His replacement, Sergeant First Class William James (played impeccably by Jeremy Renner), establishes himself as the complete opposite of Thompson, more than a little bit nuts, from jumpstreet. Anthony Mackie is tremendous as Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Brian Geraghty held his own as Specialist Owen Eldridge, while David Morse was excellent as always, although in just a bit role as Colonel Reed. Sanborn and Eldridge struggle with how far into hell they’re willing to follow James, who appears to have an insatiable death wish. At every turn, James thumbs his nose at uncompromisable military mandates about safety and communication, continuously putting himself and his team in danger—but also nullifying bad guys with some strange mix of luck, cockiness (873 bombs detonated!) and genius.
The screenplay was written by a freelance writer named Mark Boal, who embedded with a bomb squad in 2004 and said he was drawn toward the idea of these specialists who are “going toward what everyone else is running from.” Director Kathryn Bigelow does a terrific job of honoring Boal’s screenplay and experiences, overseeing tremendous work in introducing evil through suddenly shifting camera perspectives. The real-time nature of the film serves to build the intensity, to the point where you’re always expecting some added meaning, something else to happen just around the corner.
There were a few awkward aspects of the flick, with the relationship James forged with the hustler kid, Beckham, feeling a bit forced. Also, positioning Ralph Fiennes as a mercenary didn’t quite click, as he’s not exactly a “tough guy” type. I also found it really odd that the phrase the title comes from (used in Viet Nam to mean “in bad shape” or in a bad situation) wasn’t referenced at all in the movie, which was originally titled “The Something Jacket.” And finally, some articles indicated that veterans took issue with some of the lack of protocol and overall team behavior depicted in the film, saying that Renner’s level of risk-taking wouldn’t have been accepted. However, Boal spoke to more than 100 soldiers in doing his research, lending credence to his work and pointing out that, perhaps in such a leaderless region and situation, the cowboy nature can take hold.
The filming was done in Jordan, with reports that four or more crews would work simultaneously in 120-degree heat. The gritty, physically demanding nature of the work came through in the filming, when Renner hurt an ankle during one scene, stopping the filming for a week and throwing the entire project into jeopardy. On top of all that, the crews were shot at and had debris thrown at them as part of a legitimately hostile environment. After dealing with all of these variables, the crew had the unenviable task of taking 200 hours of footage and distilling it down into 2 hours and 13 minutes.
In the end, the movie is largely about James’s inability to reconcile both of his worlds, his struggle to balance the personas he has to live with in each; somehow, I think being married to Kate from “Lost” would make that job easier, but James just can’t puzzle it all out. Eventually, James begins to lose his mind and crack up, losing sanity to the never-ending chase, the ongoing futility of searching for answers in ratholes. When he eventually hallucinates about Beckham being turned into a living bomb, accidentally shoots Eldridge and stages a one-man invasion of an Iraqi slum, we see he’s hit rock bottom.
At one point, James views life moving on after an enormous explosion, seeing a kite being flown by an oblivious boy who accepts bombings as a natural part of his day, setting the stage for one of the tremendous scenes in the movie. James and Sanborn have a lengthy talk in the Humvee about the value of life, the role of risk and the presence of the future. Sanborn shares that he doesn’t want to die without having a son, that he is now ready for that, while James explains that he can’t process that line of thinking, doesn’t allow himself to think about or view his work in terms of risk or rolling the dice.
Near the end, we cut to James pushing his child through a store in a grocery cart, visibly struggling to come to terms with the fact that his life is now about buying cereal. In a heartbreaking scene, James comes to a decision as he’s playing with his son, saying, “As you get older, some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore … And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it’s only one or two things. With me, I think it’s one.” Essentially, James tells his family that the only thing he loves are bombs, before doing the unthinkable and abandoning his family to sign up for another tour of duty.
“The Hurt Locker” had a delayed release in the U.S., yet still overcame Chartier’s transgression to take home a stagging six Oscars. Awards aside, it says here that the sheer depth and range of emotion evoked in the film place it confidently among any war movie ever made.
No comments:
Post a Comment