Review: The Hurt Locker

After seeing the preview and reading reviews of The Hurt Locker, Brandon was pretty much obsessed with seeing it at the first possible opportunity. So instead of waiting for it to come to the cheap second run theater, we actually paid full (matinee) price to see it last weekend.

It certainly deserves the accolades it's received and entirely fulfilled the preview's promise. Exactly as advertised, the film is intensely suspenseful, a work of absorbing realism, taking you on a relentless tour from extremes of terror to moments of relief or of horrified grief and shock. It's a good war movie, a good action movie.

The main theme--the conflicts, triumphs, and failures of a hotshot, reckless loose cannon--is perhaps overfamiliar, and the film is sprinkled with predictable turns and cliches, but somehow, I didn't mind. The story is unoriginal, but it was told well, and acted superbly and humanly.

Be warned, though: we left the theater drained and dazed--a feeling which persisted quite a while afterward. The Hurt Locker is no light summer flick.