The Hurt Locker 危機倒數

Bigelow has been on critics' watch lists since her hallucinatory early films “The Loveless” and “Near Dark.” But until now she's never had a subject that so successfully used her gift for stylized suspense and what she calls “heightened emotional states” as this tale of a three-man U.S. Army bomb squad (tautly portrayed by Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) deployed in the terrifying streets of Baghdad.

Actually, it's unfair to burden “The Hurt Locker” with the Iraq label. It's more of a classic study of men in combat and under stress that could have taken place almost any time, anywhere. There's no sense of winning or losing a war here, no notion of making a difference or achieving lofty geopolitical aims. By narrowing its focus to the bomb squad's specific life-or-death tasks of defusing roadside IEDs (improvised explosive devices), the film manages to expand its effectiveness as well as its relevance.

Although its themes are universal, “Hurt Locker's” specificity of action and situation are what make it compelling. Bigelow and her team bring an awesome ferocity to re-creating the unhinged mania of bomb removal in an alien, culturally unfathomable atmosphere.

“The Hurt Locker's” realism begins with the lean and compelling script by Mark Boal, a journalist and screenwriter who wrote the magazine article on which “In the Valley of Elah” was based. Boal spent time embedded with an Army bomb squad in Iraq, and the resulting script is closely observed and sharp enough to attract, in addition to the three stars, performers of the caliber of Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes and David Morse in what essentially are supporting roles.

The actors who play the bomb-squad trio are admired in the business as consummate professionals: Renner for his work in “Dahmer” and “North Country;” the protean Mackie for “Half Nelson,” “Brother to Brother” and “Million Dollar Baby” and Geraghty for “Bobby” and “Jarhead.” What they accomplish here will raise their profiles considerably.

Helping the actors dig into themselves are aspects of the way “The Hurt Locker” was shot by Barry Ackroyd, who did similarly impeccable verité work on “United 93.” First, most of the film was photographed in the at-times 130-degree heat and dust of Amman, Jordan, a city with physical similarities to parts of Baghdad. Second, Bigelow chose to shoot with four hand-held cameras working simultaneously, giving editors Bob Murawski and Chris Innis a staggering 200 hours of footage to deal with.

Bigelow brought all these elements together by hewing to that venerable dramatic rubric of revealing character through action. “The Hurt Locker” is structured around the 38 days the three men in the EOD (for Explosive Ordnance Disposal) squad have left in their rotation in Iraq. Men like Spc. Owen Eldridge (Geraghty) know all too well that every new day is potentially one they will not survive. They all want to avoid the hurt locker, the place where bad things happen.

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