Written by Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker features an elite squad of U.S. army soldiers, dismantling bombs in the most dangerous areas of Baghdad. The film’s anything but your typical big-budget war flick—avoiding sensationalism and without political agenda, it realistically portrays one of the most fascinating and underrepresented facets of the war in Iraq, in the process capturing the psychological complexity of soldiers who voluntarily deal with borderline-psychotic danger on a daily basis. Rising star Jeremy Renner taps into Sergeant William James, a member of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), who’s taken apart 873 bombs in the heat of combat. James and his subordinates Sanborn and Eldridge (Notorious star Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, respectively) are specially trained to handle... [read full story]
