The Hurt Locker is "an intense portrayal of elite soldiers who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat. When a new sergeant, James, takes over a highly trained bomb disposal team amidst violent conflict, he surprises his two subordinates, Sanborn and Eldridge, by recklessly plunging them into a deadly game of urban combat. James behaves as if he's indifferent to death. (imdb)". It has scenes of action and suspense that keep you on the edge of your seat for up to 20 minutes at a time, and it never lets up. All the while, the carefully drawn character of James is being developed without the viewer even being directly aware of it. You understand his passion through your own fear of what's happening on screen; the film plays into the visceral nature of the action and then utilizes that as an ingenious form of character development.
Every good film finds a way to pull the viewer into the experience; this one uses it's suspense and segmented plot. You never know what's going to happen, since the format of the movie is a series of scenarios. The characters move forward, but every mission they go on is separate. It gets the audience to understand that every day over there brings it's own unique dangers and situations, to give a greater perception of the world these characters live in.
James is founded on principles and anarchy at his core. He has his own way of making sense of war, and thus the world. He loves the rush of dealing with bombs; it's the only thing that makes him feel alive. He believes in doing the right thing. He puts himself in danger not only for his own enjoyment, but for saving the lives of others; although sometimes saving others is the justification he needs to do something for himself.
In a scene about mid-way through the film, a pitched sniper battle begins. Sanborn is using a Barret sniper rifle, with James spotting for him. He takes down 3 insurgents, and as he fires the last bullet, there is a shot of the shell casing falling to the sand in slow motion. When you see this scene the first time, it's a bit out of place; very artistic but still slightly confusing. It's not until you finish the film and look back on that moment that you understand it's importance. That was the last time Sanborn fires a gun in the film, and as we're meant to understand, his life. As he's riding in the Humvee with James near the end, he says he's done and he wants a son. That last bullet he fired will remain with him always, as will his time in Iraq. Those moments etched in his being forever, as much as he tries to forget them. That's the difference between him and James. Sanborn wants to move on, but James wants to stay. At one point, Sanborn asks James, "do you think I've got what it takes to be in the suit?", to which James replies "hell no". He tells it to him in neither a relieving or condescending way, but in a way that's from another school of understanding. Sanborn still has a spark in him, a zeal for life. When him and James were fighting drunk and James was on top of him, Sanborn pulls out a knife and puts it to James' throat. James smiles and pushes the knife even more to his own throat, as if he dares J.T. to finish the job. James isn't driven by life anymore, more so by actions and momentum. He doesn't understand or care to understand anything outside of his realm. When he says that Sanborn can't put on the suit, it's a way of him telling Sanborn that he can't fathom the world that he lives in.
James undergoes a series of challenges to his own sense of reality throughout the film, but conquers on after all of it. He starts a friendship with a boy named Beckham, someone who may remind him of his lost innocence while still being somewhat of a kindred spirit. Later on in the story, he finds the body of a young Iraqi boy with a bomb inside of his dead body. He thinks it's beckham, and takes the body out to be buried instead of detonating it to get rid of any remaining ordinance. After all of this happens, he sees beckham again and realizes the boy he found was just some random kid. He ignores beckham in an attempt to retain his self-built understanding of the chaos of his environment. In another incident, he orders his teammates to go into a town with him to hunt down bad guys. He makes an impulsive decision based on a sudden surge of adrenaline, guised by an overwhelming need to punish the evil. His lapse in judgment results in Eldridge almost getting killed; James accidentally shoots him in the leg in taking down two insurgents carrying him away. Eldridge trusted James after he helped him earlier in the film, and Eldridge felt that James would protect him until the end of their time together. When James reflects on the irresponsibility of what he did, bringing his men into that situation, he breaks down. He has a sudden realization of the alternate (and more honest) perspective of what he did. He knows he has cracks, but he doesn't know how to fix them. Maybe he doesn't even want to. James revels in chaos but convinces himself there is some kind of order to it -- even after some of his methods are proven to be counterproductive for everyone including himself.
When Will returns home, he's in boredom and confusion as to what his place is. He's used to being in life or death situations all the time, and now he's at home cutting fruit and picking up cereal at the store. He's completely fine with not fitting in, and he doesn't particularly care to. There's a tender scene with James and his son, where James talks about how he began to love less and less as he got older. Now he only loves working with bombs; he loves it more than his own child. We assume that he's seen enough war that he's become a borderline nihilist outside of his strong sense of purpose when in action. The most interesting part about all of this is how we expect him to say something like this, but at the same time this kind of despair is slightly foreign. It opens up a new realm of conversation in regards to James' psychology, especially when thinking about his past. He's so multi-faceted, and the film does a brilliant job of keeping us informed enough to have an idea of who he is, while retaining enough mystery to stimulate great conversation.
The cinematography and narrative style play an extremely important part in communicating these developments of the central characters. If one were to classify the genre of this film, thriller/character study would probably be most accurate. Bigelow uses traditional thriller elements to get us into James' mindset, utilizing our fear to add to his sense of adrenaline. If we get that scared by just watching it, imagine what the reality would be like; we know for a fact that James has to be crazy to do it, simply because of our experience in watching the movie.
In the last moments of the film, James returns to Iraq for a new year-long rotation. One of the strongest images in the film is the sight of him walking into the distance wearing the bomb suit, with the readout at the top of the screen saying 365 days remaining. He walks into an uncertain fate with a smile, and he has to endure this for 10 times the amount of time we saw in the movie. William James is in a hurt locker, probably has been for a long time, and will be for the rest of his life. And he enjoys it.
