Movie Mini-Review: The Hurt Locker

All in all, "The Hurt Locker" is a fine film.  It's just not the masterpiece that all of the critics seem to make it out to be.  I would say it rates as a B+.  What this film is is largely a character study of Staff Sergeant Will James, a bomb technician who defuses Improvised Explosive Devices during the Iraq War.  A lot of different scenes occur, but they don't necessarily add up to anything, and that's the biggest flaw of the movie. Jeremy Renner is good as Will, with excellent supporting acting by Anthony Mackie as Sanborn and Brian Geraghty as Eldredge as members of James' team.  For "Lost" fans, Evangeline Lilly has almost a cameo appearance in the movie as James' wife.  The structure of the story reminds me of "Jarhead", the film by Sam Mendes about one soldier's experience in the first Gulf War.  My expectations for war movies is for them to be at the level of Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan", where you get to experience war while going on a journey with the characters.  No such journey occurs here.  It's just a job, so do it and move on.  The theme here is that war can be an addiction, like drugs.  Maybe so, but I was hoping to feel more through the characters.  Kathryn Bigelow's directing is very good, but I wish the screenplay had more emotion to it.