Visceral is the word.

The Hurt Locker is about Iraq, and about men, and about war.  It is certainly the most heralded film to emerge from the conflict.  The plot centers on William James (Jeremy Renner).  His rank: Sergeant First Class, US Army.  His addiction: taking bombs apart.  When James takes charge of a bomb-disposal squad, Bravo Company, he finds that the troops take issue with his methods.  The newly anointed head man is a renegade to the rulebook.  He seeks out fresh explosives to dismantle with a fearsome urgency, hunting them wherever they may be.  All the while, James keeps count of successful disarmaments, the number whizzing steadily upward.  Bravo Company lives in fear for unnecessary casualties on the heels of their leader’s relentless bomb-sniffing.

Director Kathryn Bigelow focuses in on the view of war espoused by writers like Chris Hedges.  Her film highlights a quote of Hedges’: “The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”  James cares little for his life and highly for his war.  The Sergeant’s prize possession is a trove of bomb components.  “This box is full of stuff that almost killed me,” he says, with relish.  To endure such terrors as Bravo does, its men must have some passion making the suffering worth undergoing.  Clearly, James loves his work.  The adrenaline, the feeling of invincibility, the blood pumping to the head – the octane of the fight is James’ everything.

Such a breakdown cannot provide the essential reason for which nations go to war.  Nonetheless, Bigelow’s work gives us great insight.  Would James be interested in the dilemma?  The more I see his character, the more I see his unlikely likeness to Sartre and Camus.  He could be an existentialist mounting his example on thoughtless obedience to the drive for gratification.  Yet, that pleasure serves a higher purpose.  Generals and general staffs determine it. James executes it.

The Hurt Locker explores the lives in flux of professional soldiers that must undergo personal transformations each time they move between worlds.

Renner is a standout.  The star has screen presence – spades of it – in his understated way.  The actor does what a George Clooney or Robert Redford of yore could not.  He nails the dichotomy of his character.  James is at once both a middling civilian and a super-solider.  He’s the middle-class father pushing a cart down the supermarket aisle, and the first-class bomb expert disassembling insurgent explosives.  In either case, the man fulfills roles defined by others in ways that he defines himself.  Within limited boundaries.  Purpose is relative.  Presupposed action can exist independent from reasoning.

The actor is the perfect leading man for another reason.  He’s a talent that matured outside of Hollywood.  The service members that run impossible missions daily do so anonymously.  Here at home, civilians celebrate the actors that play the roles more than the soldiers who fight for our nation’s security.  America’s public keeps the angels of the battlefield unsung too often.  It’s appropriate that audiences don’t become distracted with a star cast – “Oh, there’s Russell Crowe! Brad Pitt! Matt Damon!”  The fighters that Renner and Co. portray are true stars.  But you will not read about them.  You will only know that somewhere now, in places known and unknown, our fighters face locked cycles of coalescent adrenaline, dualism, misgiving, sacrifice, and pride.

Here are the caveats.  Reality, the Hurt Locker is not.  The Iraq War, it is not.  The Hurt Locker is, however, a thrilling and surprisingly poignant.  It is an interpretation of the war, one from the outside.  In that sense, the Hurt Locker is a genuine historical source.  Many years hence, when thinkers of any stripe attempt to understand the nature of our war, they should certainly factor The Hurt Locker in that understanding.