I watched The Hurt Locker, a 2008 film by Kathryn Bigelow not released in the US domestically until 2009. The film stars Jeremy Renner as a Sgt. 1st Class William James, a reckless man talented with defusing explosives. Sgt. James deploys to the U.S. Army’s Bravo Company in Iraq in 2004 after their unit’s team leader is killed in an IED explosion. James is blessed with natural skills so he’s very good at what he does. However, his reckless behavior and disregard for protocol unnerves his team, and causes serious conflict. The film counts down the last 30+ days of Bravo’s Company’s tour in Iraq, and the soldiers’ primary goal is to stay alive until they can get home.
This was a pretty good movie. Of course, the acting was good, and the direction was good. No doubt about it. What I liked most about it was that I couldn’t predict what would happen next. So many films that I’ve watched recently, I could predict the plot twists a mile away. Here, with the nature of the film being a bomb disposal unit during an intense war, you don’t know what is going to happen next. A war zone is inherently unpredictable.
The Hurt Locker (2008)