Kathryn Bigelow
2008
The best film I've seen so far in 2009, Kathryn Bigelow's hair-rasing Iraq war thriller is at once a triumphant work of art, a psychological analysis of combat, and a mainstream popcorn-muncher. After the death of their squad's IED expert, Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge are saddled with a brash replacement (Jeremy Renner), who goes about bomb defusing with a near insane disregard for military protocol and personal safety. Each life-or-death scenario begins with the company's remaining tour time marked on the screen, echoing Sanborn's vocal anxieties and determination to make it out of the desert in one piece. The tense scenarios are unsurprisingly hackle-raising by design, but the back-at-barracks pathos of tough guys scared shitless, boozing and wrestling for escapism is a nice window into the difficulty of downtime and emergence of mental wounds. Rennner's performance is near perfect with his "git 'er done" attitude and unconscious selfishness pitched against subtly conveyed inner turmoil. The recent spate of films regarding Iraq have been about as popular as the war itself, but leave it to Kathryn Bigelow to prove there's a worthwhile film in this landscape after all.
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