The Hurt Locker ~ Set to Sweep the Awards?
Anyone who knows me, knows I love movies. The movie has to be pretty awful or creep me out for me to walk out of it. In my entire life, I’ve not been able to watch two movies: American Werewolf in London (that was when they were first developing the morphing technique and the change from man to wolf just was too realistic back then) and the original Night of the Living Dead which I tried to watch late at night in the basement of my parents’ house when I was a youngster.
Flash forward ten years. I’ve gotten braver, so much that I even saw Halloween at the midnight show in Los Angeles while I was student teaching. Movie scared me, but I kept on til the bloody end.
So, it should come now, as no surprise that I see just about everything I’m interested in. And that’s a lot.
But, well, The Hurt Locker with Guy Pearce (whom I adore), Jeremy Renner and a list of excellent actors, was something that just didn’t pique my interest. I originally thought it was a cop movie, about a rogue cop ruining the lives of other cops trying to make a difference in their city.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The Hurt Locker is a story about a bomb squad in Iraq; about how they screw up the courage to go out and diffuse roadside IED’s and how they are just trying to stay alive to get back home. But The Hurt Locker is more than that. This is the story of one man, SSG William James, brilliantly portrayed by Jeremy Renner, who has found his place in the world by taking on bombmakers and undoing their potential carnage (873 and counting). SSG James doesn’t fit in the everyday life of America. He’s too antsy, too much the adrenaline junkie, too much an outsider to his own culture.
And, this is what could make the 9 times nominated, The Hurt Locker, the sleeper to sweep the Academy Awards this year. It is not the blue beauty of Avatar (also nominated for 9 Oscars), nor the wonderful animamtion of UP (nominated 5 times).
The Hurt Locker (a military expression used to mean the equivalent of ‘he’s in a world of hurt’) is part gritty reality, part Blair Witch Project (you feel like you are right there with the guys sweating out difussing a bomb), part amazing cinematography. Strong acting by all the lead characters, strong supporting actors (Guy Pearce, David Morse, Ralph Fiennes) beautiful music that doesn’t overwhelm the story, and a script that was tight, tension-filled, and a balanced act of action, tension and introspection all make this movie a strong contender.
If you haven’t seen The Hurt Locker, it is now on pay-per-view, On Demand, and available for DVD rental.