The Bored Locker

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t hear all the hype surrounding The Hurt Locker. This movie about the war in Iraq was supposed to be the best “modern” war film since Black Hawk Down and supposedly was the one film that can stop Avatar from winning the Best Picture award at the 2010 Oscars. I had been putting off watching it for months because there was always something that, to me at least, seemed more interesting to do. But, I finally gave in on the night before the Academy Awards.

Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) leads the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit of the US Army’s Bravo Company in Baghdad, Iraq. The former head, was killed while trying to disarm a remote-detonated explosive device and James tries to fit in with his new troops. It becomes increasingly obvious to Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) that James is a bit of a loose cannon, effective but also reckless. A raid on a warehouse reveals the dead body of a boy who’s been implanted with bombs. Believing the boy to be someone who sold DVDs to him, James leads the team to hunt down insurgents who detonated a bomb, but results in Eldridge getting shot in the leg. Though the EOD team’s tour of duty eventually ends, SFC James realizes the one thing he loves is being in the war zone.

Director Kathryn Bigelow has done something that so few directors, male or female, have attempted to do: make a serious war movie. The Hurt Locker isn’t pretty and it doesn’t present itself as anything but a heavy drama. By casting relative unknowns, the filmmakers ground the film in realism and make the scenario more believable.

Unfortunately for me, it also bored me no end. The first half of this film just drags on and on after the death of the former head of the EOD played by Guy Pearce. Steeped in dialogue and lots of military jargon, I somehow found myself nodding off after James first arrives in Baghdad. Yes, the sniper scenes and the explosions are great visually while also carrying a healthy amount of tension, but that didn’t make up for that boring start. For me, if a movie bores me at any point, then it clearly doesn’t deserve an Academy Award for Best Picture.

Bigelow should be commended for bringing all of these myriad elements together into a movie, but I cannot and will not commend her for nearly knocking me out at the start of her film. Renner’s portrayal of the adrenaline junkie SFC James was credible and it might be the vehicle to finally make him a star, but it still took him so long to make me sympathetic that I almost gave up on him.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences can give The Hurt Locker all the awards they want. They can do it as a slap in the face of James Cameron and Avatar, as well as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, or Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, and Disney’s Up. For me, I was still more engaged in each of these latter movies than with Bigelow’s award-winning piece.