‘The Hurt Locker’ has an explosive, slow fuse

Alonso Duralde Film critic

Finally making its way into theaters during summer blockbuster season after acclaimed festival screenings, “The Hurt Locker” is as honest, powerful and suspenseful as the new “Transformers” is … well, none of those things.

From the film’s very first scene, director Kathryn Bigelow (“Strange Days”) puts a vise around the viewer’s chest and slowly, deliberately squeezes. While no film can completely capture the horrors of warfare, “The Hurt Locker” does at least put us in a world where every stranger could be a killer and every heap of trash or discarded automobile could be hiding a deadly bomb.

And deadly bombs are the specialty of Bravo company, whose job it is to defuse IEDs and other roadside explosives. For Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), this daily dance with death has become just another part of their quotidian existence as they count down the remaining days of Bravo company’s rotation; Sanborn seems to keep his demons tightly tamped down, while Eldridge occasionally discusses his fear of dying with an Army psychiatrist.

Quick facts Starring: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill Director: Judd Apatow Run time: 2 hours, 25 minutes MPAA rating: R

Neither soldier is quite prepared for the arrival of Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), a risk-taking adrenaline junky who approaches his work with a disturbing enthusiasm. It’s not long before Sanborn and Eldridge find themselves discussing the possibility of an “accidental” explosion that might take out James, whose dangerously devil-may-care attitude is putting the entire company in jeopardy.

Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (who has a story credit on another powerful Iraq war movie, “In the Valley of Elah”) keep the film mostly episodic, placing their characters (and the audience) into one perilous situation after another. There’s not tons of dialogue, naturally, but we get a sense of who these fighting men are and what they’re willing to do to survive over the course of each terrifying and dangerous incident. The director also wisely tips her hand early that any character could die at any time, which ratchets up the suspense.

Subsequently, the actors are called on to shoulder a great deal of the narrative burden, but Bigelow has chosen well. Renner (who appeared on ABC’s “The Unusuals”) may be one of today’s greatest American film actors you’ve never heard of; his moving and haunted portrayal of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in “Dahmer” still ranks among the decade’s best performances, and he’s never less than spot-on in “The Hurt Locker.” James doesn’t whoop it up like Robert Duvall’s surf-mad colonel in “Apocalypse Now,” but the stillness of his bravado and recklessness makes the performance that much more powerful.

The talented Mackie, as a fellow soldier trying to keep things together in his unit and in his own psyche, brilliantly goes toe-to-toe with Renner. (Both actors received well-deserved Spirit Award nominations for their work.) Meanwhile, Geraghty — who’s popped up in recent years in everything from “We Are Marshall” to “I Know Who Killed Me” — poignantly keeps things grounded as a grunt who just wants to get out of Iraq in one piece.

The box office hasn’t been kind to Iraq movies, and it’s unclear whether or not this one will share the fate that has befallen films both powerful (“Elah,” “Stop-Loss”) and dreadful (“Rendition,” “Home of the Brave”). But “The Hurt Locker” is the kind of extraordinarily truthful and uncompromising movie that any politician who claims to support the troops while extending the war and cutting funds for veterans’ benefits — or any chickenhawk pundit who pooh-poohs the ongoing effects of PTSD — should be forced to see.

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