Hurt Locker, The

I’m not quite sure why most movies about the Iraq war have been such spectacular failures. Maybe it’s because people want to use movies to escape from real life issues like that. Maybe those movies were overtly political, and people don’t want politics rammed down their throats. And maybe (probably) all those movies were complete shit… until now. The only good piece of filmmaking I have seen to date about the current war wasn’t a film at all; it was the mini-series “Generation Kill.” But even that seemed a little too fabricated. Nothing could get more realistic than the new film “The Hurt Locker.”

“The Hurt Locker” is about a small group of soldiers whose mission it is to defuse IEDs, or improvised explosive devices. What makes it different, and also better, than all the Iraq war films to come along up to this point is that it’s not really about the Iraq war per se. That is, it’s about war in general and happens to be set during the Iraq war. Instead of being a political film about whether or not we should have gone to war, or the morality of war, it’s just a movie about a job that is highly specialized and insanely dangerous. The fact remains that whether or not you believe the war was done for the right reasons, American soldiers are there right now and they have possibly the most stressful day to day lives on the globe. And no job in the military is more stressful than trying to defuse a bomb that could blow you up at any second. The film is about a lot of things though. It’s about the fine line between bravery and insanity, the conundrum of taking lives to save lives, the detachment from reality that the horrors of war can cause, and the adrenaline rush that only those things can provide.

The film is nothing short of amazing. It is the epitome of suspense, tension and intensity. The directing is astoundingly good. The acting is incredible. There isn’t one point when I didn’t believe I was seeing soldiers doing the craziest job on earth. But most importantly the tension and anxiety is unrelenting. Your heart will stop and you’ll hold your breathe till the very end of the film. You will feel the adrenaline fueled panic of a bomb squad long after you leave the theater. This film is damn near perfect. It’s not playing everywhere yet, but if its playing anywhere near you then you absolutely have to see it.