War is hell. And in the first years of the twenty-first century, it’s a particular type of hell that would have eluded Dante on the most fertilely creative day. It is entirely unpredictable with rules of engagement that shift as quickly as sands on a windswept dune. The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, is about this, but it’s also about the insidious allure of war for some of those soldiers who strap on a helmet and head into the fray. The film follows a bomb squad unit in Iraq, pressing in on a war that still burdens our fighting men and women with an uncompromising ferocity that serves as an important, uncomfortable reminder that what unfolds before us may be fiction, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t also very real. Befitting Boal’s background, the film has a reportorial authority. It doesn’t unfold with a tidy narrative, but moves from incident to incident taking the challenges as they come, just like those warriors must. Without a clear thread to return to, Bigelow must pull on different reserves of ingenuity to propel the film forward. She crafts something that is dynamic and intimate, bold and quietly intelligent, empathetic and free of political judgment. Through this approach, she finds the unexpected center of the film’s protagonist, played exceptionally by Jeremy Renner. He tackles his job with a fearlessness that might seem reckless if it weren’t grounded in pure pragmatism. He finds some thrill in the adrenaline of defusing bombs, but, more importantly, he finds an odd dependability there, a sense that he can define the parameters of his task in a way that seems impossible when staring down an overstocked grocery aisle in civilian life, where the abundance of choice inspires paralysis. Before a battlement of colorful cereal boxes, the more easily defined dangers of a war-torn street often their own form of solace and security.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)