The Hurt Locker

Here's a balls-to-the-wall war thriller that reminded me just how intense movies can be. Made for a measly $15 million, and featuring a leading man without any "major" credits to his resume, The Hurt Locker absolutely blew me away right from its opening set piece.

The film is about a bomb disposal unit in Iraq during 2004. It focuses on Bravo Company, a three-man unit with 40 days left in its tour. The unit's commanding officer, Sergeant James, has become so enthralled with disarming bombs that the act has virtually become his drug of choice. So drawn to it, is James, that he even begins gambling with the lives of the men in his unit just so he can get his next "adrenaline fix."

That's all I'll say about the plot of the movie. Hopefully. It's a surprising and poignant drama featuring a truly dynamic lead character played by the excellent, Jeremy Renner. Sergeant James isn't given a duck soup backstory that informs his behaviour - he just is the way he is because he's good enough at his job to have survived this long. It's not that he doesn't care about his men - there are scenes where he displays excellent leadership and tenderness for them - the problem with Sergeant James is that he's an addict and addicts know not what they do. Not after a certain point, they don't.

Aside from Renner, Anthony Mackie is excellent as the second-in-command, and the one character who is initially opposed to James's behaviour. How their relationship develops a certain mutual insight is very well handled, relying on a dire sequence, where the two character must rely on one another for survival to generate their understanding of one another.

Speaking of said sequence, it's a hell of a sniper shootout that feels like it unfolds in real time. Credit goes to director Kathryn Bigelow, the real star of this movie, for generating several scenes of unrelenting tension. Bigelow has always been a talented visualist; Strange Days is one of the more visually striking films in history and Point Break is a good action flick, with at least one amazing foot chase.

Here, however, Bigelow has found the right balance between visual panache and involving character study. Despite all of the stunning bomb disarming sequences, none of them would be as suspenseful had Bigelow not cleverly developed her characters and their conflicts.

The Hurt Locker is easily the best film that I've seen this year. It blows would-be thrillers like The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3 and Public Enemies right out of the water. This is pure, brawny action filmmaking that hopefully will garner awards consideration for Bigelow and Renner.

Public Enemies

Public Enemies has all the makings of a Michael Mann classic; a mega watt star, intense subject matter, and a chance for him to exercise his innovative filming prowess, and yet, something's missing. Something that I just could not put my finger on initially....at least, not until I saw The Hurt Locker the next night, and remembered what a real, emotionally involving thriller looked/felt like.

Mann's made all the same mistakes here that he made with Miami Vice a few years back - he's told a cool, detached story that really fails to draw the audience in at all , moreover, the film doesn't even seem to try to generate emotional stake. Mann is so idiosyncratic, so obsessed with detail and his film's visual palette that I worry he loses tract of the stories real draw - the human element. Mann's best films, Heat, The Insider, Collateral, and Thief are all fueled by the characters's tangible conflicts, and allow the audience to invest something of consequence into the movie.

As in Miami Vice, Mann fails to do this. Instead, he opts for focus on the para ordinance and tactical maneuvers of the cops and criminals. He orchestrates beautiful set pieces, chooses wonderful music, and seems to have nailed his sense of pacing....but he forgot the two things that really matter; story and character.

I will say this; by sheer force of talent, Marion Contillard is award-worthy. She dominates the movie, and that includes Depp. Her natural beauty, coupled with her vulnerability and toughness make for a very strong female character. It's a shame that she's short-changed by the script.

Depp, on the other hand, is quietly reserved. A smoldering performance that never really amounts to anything memorable. He has a few nice scenes, but Contillard blows him off the screen.

Bale is Bale. I'm tired of his pensive, 'I'm so intense the veins are going to pop of out my face,' act. He should do a comedy. He should do three.

I would like to say that Stephen Lang, with three minutes of screen time, almost steals the entire film. His final scene, with Contillard, is the film's best and most powerful.

You may read this review and assume that I disliked the movie. That's not the case. Michael Mann is my favorite director, period. I expect a lot of his films and Public Enemies follows Miami Vice down the slight disappointment path. If you like beautiful, impressive filmmaking, see this.