Iron Man Week: The Hurt Locker

I know, no one needs to hear any more about The Hurt Locker.  With its high profile Oscar wins, extended run in theaters, and big time DVD business, the backlash is probably in full effect now.  Still, The Hurt Locker is a uniquely entertaining and almost apolitical look at the war in Iraq.  Most of the Iraq and Afghanistan war movies have done poorly, probably because that stuff still all over the news and no one needs a fictionalization of it to have an opinion yet.  What's different about The Hurt Locker is the way the film takes a particular group of soldiers doing a very specific job and focuses on them exclusively without trying to get into the global-political implications.  These guys could be anywhere, at any time.

The bomb protection suit that Jeremy Renner dons in the film is amazing.  In fact, it looks like a slightly more mobile version of the Ursus bear suit from Project Grizzly.   Even with all of that armor and padding, the characters never seem safe.  The image depicted in the poster is one of the film's many jaw-dropping moments where Renner traces some fuse lines to a nasty collection of buried explosives.  The film deserves the hype, and even though it wouldn't have been my choice for best picture in 2009, it's a solid and perfectly-constructed military thriller.