The Hurt Locker

The opening half-reel of The Hurt Locker rivets you to your seat. The rest of the film delivers the promise of gripping action scenes mixed with war buddy bonding hinted at in the beginning. Director Kathryn Bigelow turns the faucet wide open for small scale battle scenes yet helms intimate dramatic moments with insight and an odd compassion for the characters.
If you're a big name actor in The Hurt Locker chances are you get offed as quickly as you make your screen entrance. The main cast centers on a three man bomb disposal squad in Iraq (think IED and car bombs) headed by Staff Sergeant James (Jeremy Renner) whose penchant for danger both aggravates and frightens his team members Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). Renner offers a complex turn that at first has the audience ready to side with Sanborn and frag him. Later his devil-may-care attitude and the inner satisfaction he derives from constantly risking his life in seconds-remaining fashion produces enough insight into his psyche to render him somewhat sympathetic. Renner totally envelopes this role inviting us to question our own need to, say, drive fast to make a stop light, as if that could be compared to the reckless abandon James uses around live explosives.
If you remember The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, truly an underdog film not unlike Hurt Locker, you'll recall Renner standing out among the many excellent supporting performers. Mackie and Geraghty match him for intensity even while their characters are polar opposites. If you like the wartime and bomb suspense combo a Powell and Pressburger film The Small Back Room (1949) deals with similar situations in WWII England.
Fans of Bigelow know she's capable of alarmingly good genre action films (Point Break, Near Dark) as well as darker themed perspectives (Strange Days, The Weight of Water). The plot depicts the last 40 or so days of the unit's time left in Iraq. Situation after situation escalates the tension as one bomb or series of bombs must be dealt with. The Hurt Locker is good enough to want to savor twice if only to approach the oblique ending another time with a different view.