The Hurt Locker (2008)

Allow me to alarm you: what we have here is a movie worth seeing this summer that lives up to its hype.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, working from a script by Mark Boal (whose only previously produced work is In the Valley of Elah), quotes "war is a drug" at the opening and then makes good on that promise.

Inside of 131 minutes, bombs will detonate, people will be shot, and the truly terrifying thing is getting up and going through it the next day. Bigelow excels at creating tension so that no two diffusions are the same and the audience will never be sure who will make it to the next scene.

The movie is anchored by compelling, human performances across the board. Whether it is in the script or no, Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty refuse to allow their characters to slip archetypes of maverick, by the book, and the green soilder caught between them, respectively. Geraghty finds time to give his character quiet confidence, while Mackie explores Sanborn's short fuse.

All of it supports Renner's finely calibrated performance. At no point will he let his character be any one thing, and he will not make it easy for you to figure him out. There are always more layers, each of them revealing a solid human being, so fully flesh-and-blood that your connection is difficult to shake after you leave the theatre. It doesn't hurt that he possesses the kind of sex appeal that draws you in slowly and hooks you for life.

A couple of shots recalled Lord of War, but this is a better movie than that. Barry Ackroyd is probably the better DP. In The Wind That Shakes the Barley, he showed us how guerrilla warfare can make a homeland seem alien and inhospitable. Here, he takes an alien and inhospitable land in a time of war and makes it home. The desert's embrace may be unfamiliar but at least it's warm.

The triumph of Bigelow's production, much like triumph of its performances, is in its ability to keep you guessing. The plot is constantly twisting away from you and not in the Shyamalan "gotcha!" way. Instead, the uncertainty rings palpably, petrifying true. Having Guy Pearce, David Morse, and Ralph Fiennes show up is just gravy. A