THE HURT LOCKER

THE HURT LOCKER
2009, Kathryn Bigelow, USA, 131 min.
With Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie

"A great film, an intelligent film...A leading contender for Academy Awards."—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"A full-throttle body shock of a movie. It gets inside you like a virus, puts your nerves in a blender, and twists your guts into a Gordian knot."—Scott Foundas, Village Voice

THE HURT LOCKER (with a 94 score on metacritic.com) has been the best-reviewed movie of 2009, as well as virtually the only Iraq War film not to fizzle at the box office. The story centers on a bomb-defusing specialist (Renner in a revelatory performance) whose cowboy cockiness puts him on a collision course with his more cautious comrades. The sensational suspense set-pieces confirm Bigelow's status as one of the great contemporary action directors, but the white-knuckle factor is deepened by the film's psychological insight (especially regarding the narcotic-like allure of danger) and its ultra-authentic depiction of a battlefield where moral and geographical boundaries are hard to see. 35mm. (MR)