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[huma]

Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Ralph Fiennes
Genre: Action
Direction: Kathryn Bigelow
Duration: 2 hours 7 minutes

Story: Sergeant William James joins an elite corp of American soldiers in Iraq as the bomb defuser. He spends most of his time in dangerous territory, swathed in protective battle gear, trying to defuse human and car bombs, while his team tries to protect him from snipers and mysterious locals who trigger off the remote-controlled bombs. The film explores the effect of this daily tryst with death on the psyche of young soldiers, trapped in a political battle that seems to be heading nowhere....

Movie Review: The film takes off from a statement by Chris Hedges, a war correspondent for the New York Times. After having studied the psyche of the young American soldiers on battleground Iraq, Hedges declared: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction; for war is a drug." A drug potent enough to de-humanise, de-sensitise the participants and transform them into killing machines? Or a drug, just strong enough to infuse that degree of adrenalin rush that is required to give you the courage to relentlessly court death through death-defying tasks like defusing bombs, chasing snipers, clearing mines, escaping suicide bombers....

The beauty of Bigelow's film lies in the middle-of-the-road path it traverses. It may not be an overtly anti-war film like James Cameron's Avatar; yet, it surely isn't a pro-war film that unabashedly celebrates America's foreign policy offensive in alien lands. It is a thinker's film, that forces you to ponder on both the necessity and futility of violence in the modern world.

There's a poignant -- and thought provoking scene -- at the end of the film where Sgt James (Jeremy Renner), who has defused 800 plus bombs, says he doesn't know why he does it. "Do you know why I don't know why?" he asks his team mate Sgt Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). "I don't know why," replies an equally confused Sanborn. Touching and truly reflective of the futility and inevitability of war! Again, when James' dare-devilry and job expertise causes his senior to ask him what's the best way to defuse bombs, James crisply declares: "the best way is the way to remain alive!" Of course, our hero is scared, vulnerable and does question his daily routine (relentlessly disentangling wires that could trigger off his death) even though he seems to get a high going through it, with apparent nonchalance, recklessness and fearlessness.

While his bomb defusing heroics are nerve-wracking and truly tense, some of the best parts of the film lie in James' interaction with the people around him. With the rest of the boys, he plays rough games; but with young Beckham, the local boy who sells pirated DVDs, he plays football. Add to this, the edgy overtones of the film which unfolds like a thriller, the questioning tenor of the screenplay and the brilliant cinematography where Barry Ackroyd suitably transforms Jordan into battle zone Iraq, and you have a film that deserves all the six Oscars it recently grabbed.

Don't miss this topical teaser of a film that dares to go inside the mind of the young soldier who is herded into the battle field, without actually knowing why. It could trigger off a debate on newage desh-bhakti....

A word about:

Performances : The boyz are brilliant, specially Jeremy Renner who beautifully blends cockiness with fear; bellicosity with introspection.

Screenplay : Mark Boal, who wrote the screenplay, was embedded with an American squad in Baghdad. It shows.

Dialogue : Soldier talk, all the way, with hard-hitting provocative teasers on the relevance of war thrown in.

Cinematography : Barry Ackroyd's camera captures the terror and the grime from intensely close quarters. Quite scary, specially when it pans on human bombs.