April 5, 2015

"The Hurt Locker" Review [Dplante Films]


Happy Easter to all who like either bunnies or Jesus or both or neither!
The Hurt Locker, written by Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow who also wrote Zero Dark Thirty, is a modern look at the bomb removal squads actively working in the middle east, and particularly gives a glimpse into the lives of William James (Jeremy Renner) and his new crew mates.

Now if you know anything about this film already, then you know what my opinion is going to be. But otherwise let's look at the odds here. It's an academy nominated war film. Honestly the instant that I saw that I just expected it to be propaganda. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just that usually the filmmakers try to hit the zeitgeist and do nothing else with the film, leaving the world with a million clones of the same war film. It is hard to make a modern war film, and not because of technology or anything but rather that the pressure from companies to just copy the formula is so great that there is little reason to decide to put effort into making it. The issue here is that there is so much territory to explore in this genre, but nobody does it! So is the Hurt Locker just another copy of Saving Private Ryan?

Hell no! This is possibly one of the best war films I have ever seen! And it is no shock to me, I was absolutely blown away by Zero Dark Thirty. Bigelow has demonstrated herself to be an incredible director that knows what she is doing, Boal has written an absolutely fantastic screenplay, and every award that this film has won is justified.
I don't even know where to start. The direction is probably this film's claim to fame, because it is very unique. If you ever study the use of “shaky cam,” any person against the style will admit that this film uses it extremely well. The best way I can sum up the atmosphere in this film is tense. Like, TENSE. It draws suspense like a horror film and it all is due to the direction. The film switches between fast unstable shots and occasional slow motion shots, making the film feel hurried and then just breathless. I don't think I can even describe it better than that. 
What I personally liked the most, however, was the screenplay. As I stated earlier it is very commendable for someone to make an original war film in my eyes because they are so rare, and this film does just that. Instead of making the war its self the theme, the film realizes that the audience is already familiar with that topic and delves into the characters. The war, instead of being the center of the film, is now the framework for the film's actual message (that which I will not spoil :])
The acting in this film is fantastic, Jeremy Renner was fantastic as the lead. I didn't actually know that he was in this film, so that was a neat surprise. Anthony Mackie was also phenomenal as Sgt. Sanborn, who is sort of the voice of conservatism in the film against the voice of Renner. Brian Geraghty was also awesome as the Specialist, the third member of the team, who is this sorta paranoid PTSD victim who gets caught up in between the struggle of the other two. The three leads were just overall great. I don't really remember any of the other performances off of the top of my head, so that means that they weren't bad but just not stand out. 
Lastly I wanna point out that the sound design in this film is REALLY good. There are many small sound effects that were clearly edited over and over to make sure that they had the biggest possible impact on the scene. There is just a lot of attention to detail in that regard. I find that impressive. 
Thank you guys for reading! If you liked this then please check out some of my other reviews, and also check out my list of bias HERE! It's where I vent out my personal list of how all of my reviews stack up against each other. I change it all the time, and I just went through and made some big updates to it yesterday as well! Happy Easter guys!
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