Spend Some Time on the Edge of Your Seat in The Hurt Locker

There are very few very well done thrillers anymore. These are movies that should have you hugging the very edge of your seat as you lean forward, unable to tear your eyes away and yet terrified at what you might see. These movies are usually full of heroes and villains. Many of them strive for a reality that makes the danger seem all-too real.

Kathryn Bigelow is one of those directors you don't think of nearly enough. However, she has created some genre-defining work in her time. I still challenge any of the lovers of the "Twilight" series of books and movies to watch her vampire-genre-defining movie "Near Dark" and still tell me how dreamy and wonderful vampires are. She understood that creatures that live only at night and feed off the blood of others would be dirty, stinking, evil creatures and that is what she put on the screen. There even is a love story there, but it isn't filmed in a soft-focus, oogy-googy sort of light like the dreadful schlock of the Meyers' stories.

So, she has now presented us with a war film called "The Hurt Locker." It is a movie that gained a lot of praise when it first showed up on the festival circuit last year. It gained more praise when it was finally released into theaters. It has continued to garner praise as we head into the awards season. It makes you wonder if a film getting that much praise could ever be that good. The answer is yes.

This is a war movie, sure, but if you are not a fan of war films, but are fans of a good thriller, then you need to see this movie. It tells a fairly simple story, but it tells is brilliantly, with real nail-biting scenes that seem all-too real. Bigelow filmed this movie in Jordan, sometimes less than three miles from the Iraqi border. She did everything she could to make the movie seem as real as can be, including hiring Iraqi refugees living in Jordan to play, well, Iraqis.

The movie is about the Explosives Ordinance Disposal unit that is active in Iraq. It is the job of these three men to look over possible road-side bombs. If they determine that the bombs are a real threat, then they have to remove them, eliminate them, or diffuse them. It takes nerves of steel. They use a robot when they can, but sometimes the team leader has to put on a huge, awkward, impossibly hot, bulky padded suit and helmet and get right up close to the explosives. You know that if the bomb goes boom, that suit is not going to really do a damn thing to protect the guy inside. He is just going to be dead, but inside a big bulky padded suit. His other two teammates are to keep an eye on the people around them, and in constant contact with the guy in the suit. You see, the bomb may not get you, but the snipers in the minarets around you just might.

The movie opens with one particular team as they set about to diffuse a roadside bomb. It ends with their team leader, Thompson, a man the rest of the team has respected and formed a bone with, dead from an explosion. The next day the new kid comes to take over, Sergeant James, and on their very first day it is obvious he is nothing like Thompson. James likes to get up close, ignore using a robot, and sometimes takes off the suit or doesn't respond to radio commands. He likes the challenge, the adrenaline, and the charge he gets out of facing down danger every time he has to face a bomb. The problem is, the two other men in his team also have to face the danger, and is he putting them into too much danger.

Jeremy Renner plays James. When you first see him he seems too young, too fresh-faced to be the leader of this team. In fact, the man he often opposes on his team, Anthony Mackie as Sandborn, seems like the man who should be in charge. Then, as you go along with him, you see and hear, about how he came to be where he is now. The other member of the team is Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), who is traumatized when Thompson dies because he believes he could have stopped it had he reacted quicker.

This feels real. You feel like you are right beside these men. Bigelow uses the hand-held camera device that so many filmmakers use, but she doesn't just swing it around and twirl it around like it's dangling from a string at the end of a long pole like so many filmmakers do. No, this one puts you right in the middle of these men. You are part of the team.

The scene that, for me, really sums up James and his desires comes near the end. He has gone home, for a time, and is spending his time doing mundane, every-day things. He is in the bedroom of his one-year-old son and talking to the boy. What he says there is true, but it is also sad, almost heartbreaking. You understand what he has become, through this thing called war, and may wonder if he is someone who could survive without it.

"The Hurt Locker" presents real characters and real men doing something that is really done. It is heart-stopping. It is well-presented. It is well-acted. It is well-directed. This is a very good movie and deserves the praise it is getting. However, for once, don't let that distract you from the film. See it because it's a good movie.