The Hurt Locker | The Week

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (R) **** SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. SUBSCRIBE & SAVE SIGN UP FOR

THE WEEK'S FREE NEWSLETTERS From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning news briefing

to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. A realistic look at the life and struggles of U.S. soldiers in Iraq _The Hurt Locker_ is the film

about Iraq we’ve been waiting for, said Kenneth Turan in the _Los Angeles Times._ Director Kathryn Bigelow plays down the politics and plays up the human truth of war. Though set in Baghdad

in 2004, the film is a “classic study of men in combat and under stress that could have taken place almost anytime, anywhere.” What makes it so compelling is a “pinpoint accuracy in mapping

the disorienting roads a man can walk down when his job keeps him so close to death,” said Lisa Schwarzbaum in _Entertainment_ _Weekly._ Working from material he acquired as an embedded

journalist in Iraq, screenwriter Mark Boal follows a three-man U.S. Army bomb squad, exploring the costs and demands of heroism and probing the “intersection of bravery and obsession, of

risk and responsibility.” _The_ _Hurt Locker_ is a “war movie that rarely goes ‘boom,’” said Stephanie Zacharek in _Salon.com._ There’s plenty of breathless action, but a “tense quietness”

gives the film its uncanny power. A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com