The Hurt Locker

On Saturday, I was at my folks house in T***y and we decided to drink some wine and watch The Hurt Locker.  There is a guy in it that looks like Devon Sawa but is actually Jeremy Renner.  If you are like most people, you just said Who? twice.  That's ok, I understand.

Devon Sawa is probably my favorite actor who didn't quite make it over the last ten years.  He was in such classics as Idle Hands, Final Destination, and SLC Punk -- all three movies pretty much led to some sort of success for every other actor (even Matthew Lillard was Shaggy), but we all pretty much forgot about Devon Sawa.  Well, you forgot about him.  I totally remember him.


Meranwhile, Jeremy Renner, who looks like Devon Sawa with bad skin, went to high school in Modesto -- a city renowned for continuously finishing in the bottom five of those Best Cities in America list.  Since my folks live within the second circle of radiation fall-out, they consider him to be a local boy and are taking an active interest.  (also, he's nominated for best actor this year)

The film was directed by Mrs. ex-Jim Cameron (that Mrs. ex-Jim Cameron-of-Titanic-and-Avatar fame), and is in the list of ten for the Best Pic Oscar -- maybe deservedly so.  I think it's better than Avatar, but, then again, many movies are.

Still, there is something missing.  Maybe it's plot.  We see a team of bomb defusing soldiers moving in several episodes through the streets of Baghdad in 2004.  The situations are always pretty hairy, and the characters run the gamut of soldier character archetypes -- from the by-the-book man who just wants to get out of Iraq alive (Anthony Mackie's character) to the insane-feet-first soldier (Renner) to the kid who didn't know what he was getting himself into (Brian Gerhaty's character).  Inside the war situations, sort of their public faces, the vignettes unfold with grace and intensity.  Outside, their private faces, the film lacks depth in its characters -- like it never really expected to show the soldiers outside of war -- which makes it lack that sort of emotional tug that we crave.  I would use the term "uneven" to describe this phenomenon in film.

I enjoyed this film.  I probably will never see it again unless as part of some larger film watching -- like my own personal film festival about wars in the new millennium, or if I feel like watching a series of movies starring people who look like other people (Ralph Fiennes makes an appearance, so that would work on two levels.  Renner looks like Sawa and Fiennes looks like Liam Neeson).