The Hurt Locker.
2009.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow.
Man, it’s good to have Kathryn Bigelow back. Nevermind that she’s a solid director (and more so, I think, since she broke free of the James Cameron shackles), with an effortless almost invisible style (the direct opposite in a lot of ways to Ron Howard who has no style whatsoever), but she’s old school: You get a shitload of storytelling in whatever package she delivers to the cinema.
And man, this movie is tense. It’s episodic in nature, which is perfect not just for a story about life, but about soldiers in Iraq who are trying to continue living from day to day until they can go home to whatever life will be for them. And you walk out of this film with claw marks in your legs. It’s the result of you digging your fingernails into your thighs as you watch the action.
One of the greatest invention of not just storytelling, but the cinema in genera: The ticking countdown of a clock… connected to a bomb.
Jeremy Renner probably isn’t necessarily deserving of an Oscar here, but he forges another notch in an interesting career certainly (and one that was started in 28 Weeks Later, in which he’s basically playing the same character that he is here). I mean, if you look at him, he’s a very doughy guy. And yet he’s gone the renegade loner outcast thing down effortlessly.
Also, Point Break, while being wonderfully ridiculous and the film that The Fast And The Furious ripped off horribly (Paul Walker = poor man’s Keanu Reeves), is just another example of how solid Bigelow is with mass appeal stories with action/romance. I feel the strong urge to go watch it again, just high on Bigelow’s juices. And maybe seek out Strange Days, which I’ve never seen.