The genuinely radical departure of Mark Boal’s screenplay, though, is that its central protagonist, a bomb defusing expert named Staff Sgt. James (Jeremy Renner), is addicted to the adrenaline rush of life or death situations, and doesn’t much care if he puts the rest of his squad in harm’s way while he gets his rocks off. The closer he gets to being killed, the more fun he's having. So he always makes sure he almost gets killed.

James is hardly what you would call an honorable warrior, even though as the film progresses there are (not completely effective) stabs at humanizing him. He’s a selfish bastard who sometimes giggles giddily at the knowledge that he’s unnerving his supposed brothers in arms while he takes insane risks; at one point, he even strips off his protective bomb gear because he figures if he's going to die, he wants to die comfortably. You can’t help siding with one of his squad members, Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), when Sanborn considers blowing the asshole to kingdom come as they detonate some confiscated bombs.

In this generous 8-minute clip - it's the first scene in the film - we see why James has suddenly been transferred to this particular squad (Note that the soldier whose place he takes is played, in an effective cameo, by Guy Pearce. Ralph Fiennes also shows up as a mercenary for several harrowing minutes later in the film.):

I’m not a big fan of the omnipresent shaky-cam in post-millennium filmmaking. In fact, I usually loathe it, because it’s too often motivated by a director’s need to seem hip, regardless of whether or not a sequence really calls for the technique. But Bigelow and her cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, rattle the images in “The Hurt Locker” to convey how a soldier’s attention has to constantly dart from one area to another to keep a literally explosive situation from getting out of hand.

The sudden visual clarity of the blast itself is also a brilliant move; surely such moments must fall into deep focus. Throw in the complicated sound mix, with life going on beyond the frame even as these soldiers are putting their asses to the fire, and this is a first-rate piece of filmmaking.

Frankly, I never imagined Bigelow, who has always struck me as little more than competent, could be capable of something so emotionally and physically precise. This isn't "Blue Steel" with Jamie Lee Curtis, that's for sure. Or, God forbid, "Point Break" with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze.

                                                ***

The cast as a whole is solid, although the script doesn’t do Renner many favors. It’s hard to tell what the hell we’re supposed to think of Sgt. James during a long stretch of the second act when he becomes obsessed with a young Iraqi street vendor who sells him bootlegged dvd’s; a moment involving the kid that’s supposed to be powerful is really just confusing, and contains the only genuinely gratuitous blood and guts in the film. There’s also a platitude-spewing Army psychologist (Christian Camargo) who’s so absurdly naïve, you start thinking it can’t be too long before this dumb fuck gets blown to hell. And, sure enough, he gets it good.