Point Break' seems to be coming up in conversation a lot lately, spurred on by the death of Patrick Swayze a little time ago (everyone knows about this, I only heard that John Hughes had died yetsterday). I know of at least 2 screenings of the film going on in London this week and I haven't particularly been looking out for them. Two friends in London seem to plunging deeper and deeper into a chronic state of desepration in search for a DVD copy of the film. All this perked my interest to revisit a film I haven't watched until I first started high school.
This interest in 'Point Break' in turn inspired me to finally go down to the most heartless cinema in London (the bare Shaftesbury Ave. Cineworld without a shred of creativity or thought in its design) and get a ticket to 'The Hurt Locker'. 'The Hurt Locker' is of course a new Iraq war film and the most recent from Kathryn Bigelow, the director of 'Point Break' and 'Blue Steel'. 'The Hurt Locker' tells the story of a bomb disposal unti in Iraq whose chief disposal specialist is killed in the job.
Enter Sergent William James, bomb specialist, reckless, addicted to war. James continually puts his team in danger and for this reason rather predictably aggrevates Sgt. JT Sanborn. Bigelow uses the team to again return to her exploration of slightly homoerotic themes. The two bicker in a way that hints at flirting and Bigelow gives us a perhaps cliched sequence of shirtless wrestling.
If the relations between characters is a bit stale, Bigelow works best with suspense. Most of the film is nail biting as the characters go from one bomb to another bomb. Each sequence is more suspensful than the last as Bigelow ups what is on stake for all those involved. Bigelow adds to all of this an unavoidable mood of paranoia, as the soldiers are watched by the prying eyes of the Iraqis, possible enemies, giving us an insight to the weight on a soldier in the Iraqi War that was previously unexplored in cinema.
'The Hurt Locker' gives a controversial view on war, the very idea that a soldier could become addicted to the pain and the danger of war is not much spoken about and this is exactly where Bigelow goes from the opening quote. For breaking new ground Bigelow delivers the best film on the Iraq War yet and is hopefully heralding a readiness of Hollywood to thoughtfully examine this war.
