The Hurt Locker

Two cinematic visits to Iraq in one week is probably two too many but each has been rewarding in it's own way.

This year's Academy Award winning Best Picture, 'The Hurt Locker', follows bomb technicians as they go about the business of diffusing bombs. Fifteen minutes into the film, the thought passed my mind 'is this all there is?' Are we just going to see them diffuse one bomb after another? Well yes, we are, as it turns out. There is no plot to speak of and almost nothing to link the scenes apart from a progressive countdown of the number of days remaining in the soldiers' tour of duty.

That doesn't sound promising, yet this film becomes enthralling the longer it goes. The work of the bomb technicians obviously is very dangerous. Regardless of the location there always seem to be eyes observing them from the balconies or adjacent landscape as though the soldiers were performing in some vast outdoor theatre. Inevitably one or other pair of eyes poses a danger...but which ones? It is an environment where a simple mobile phone becomes a threat. And then there are the locals, caught willingly or otherwise in a mire of war and futility.

The courageous yet flawed 'hero' has been done before but Jeremy Renner does it as well as anybody. So natural are the scenes and the performances of the entire cast that after a while it is as though you are an 'embedded' observer in the real thing.