The Hurt Locker, 4.5 stars

This is quite possibly the most suspenseful movie I have ever seen, which becomes even more of an achievement considering that I was spoilered before going in. Hitchcock said that showing the audience a bomb under the table while innocuous conversation goes on overhead was suspense. I can report to the master that it is possible to show a procession of bombs, under all manner of tables and with all manner of conversation going on overhead, not all of which will go off, and create a nearly unbearable amount of suspense.

Our story centers on a bomb disposal expert in Iraq. I am spoiling nothing to tell you that his predecessor dies in the first fifteen minutes of the film in quite possibly the best-filmed explosion I have ever seen. This is not a film concerned with the politics or justifications of the second Iraq war. This is a film about a group of men who cannot choose the comrades they must work and possibly die with, who get through endless stretches of alternating boredom and adrenaline in the ways that men always have: wrestling, whiskey, and cigarettes. Jeremy Renner gives a performance of such subtlety that it at first seems out of place in such a loud, unpredictable environment. However, a man in such a situation would not wear his feelings openly. He would show us through movements of eyebrows or the corners of his mouth how he feels about the life he left behind. It is a common complaint that men wear a sort of armor over their emotions; a man who makes his living in a physical version of that suit would not be given to weeping or speeches. The supporting performances are equally strong; a moment when Renner's companions seriously consider "accidentally" killing him to prevent his foolhardy behavior could easily have drawn unintentional laughs. Instead it seems serious and affecting.

The verisimilitude of the film is remarkable. I know comparatively little about matters such as accents or whether the extras were actually locals. Suffice to say that this film feels more authentic than many documentaries I've seen which were actually filmed in Iraq. Nothing is spared for the audience's sake, and we come away with more understanding and empathy for the men on the ground there than after a confection like "Gunner Palace", which wastes time showing us soldiers' amateur rap sessions. A word about the direction of this film: I could write a separate entry about the implications of the fact that Kathryn Bigelow, a woman, directed this film. It can never again be said that a woman can't direct an action film. Perhaps I am being overly generous, but the attitude this film takes toward its characters feels distinctively feminine to me. Giving characters development and daring to ask us to care about them feels almost new for a film of this type. If this is the beginning of a new type of action film, someday to dethrone the testosterone-driven"Transformers" model, it would be long overdue.