(2009) "The older you get," SSgt William James (Jeremy Renner) tells his baby boy, "the fewer things you really love."

In Baghdad, Iraq, near the end of their rotation in 2004, bomb techs Sgt JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Spc Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) of Bravo Company's explosive ordinance detachment (EOD), operating their remote-controlled andro to handle a bomb in the middle of a cleared business district, until a wheel comes off the little wagon, requiring their team leader, Sgt Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce), wearing a blast suit, to pick it up and deposit it at a safe distance from buildings and people, witness a horrific detonation, set off by an Arab butcher with a cellphone.

From beginning to end, director Kathryn Bigelow, from Mark Boal's screenplay, employing documentary-style realism, keeps the tension taut and intense, as if every moment the room might explode.

Replacing Thompson, former Ranger SSgt Will James arrives at Camp Victory. With 38 days remaining in the rotation, the team's called to deal with a possible IED, which James chooses to investigate without first using their bot. "He's a rowdy boy," says Eldridge; "Reckless," corrects Sanborn.

When a taxi abruptly enters the area, James, cool under pressure, convinces the driver to back off (shooting out the windshield) before returning to defusing the first device (as the cabbie's roughly pulled from his vehicle, Eldridge observes: "If he wasn't an insurgent, he is now") and then, showing more fascination than concern for his safety, uncovers the wires of several attached lethal secondaries.

Responding to a situation near a UN building, James first quenches a flaming car, next finds the trunk's full of bombs ("Interesting"), and then takes a long time searching the vehicle for the ignition device, while his jittery subordinates hold the perimeter. "We got a lot of eyes on us," observes Sanborn to Eldridge: "What's he doing?" "Looks like he's checking the oil," replies the specialist.

Afterward an impressed officer, enthusiastically hailing the "wild man," asks James how many bombs he's defused (873, probably a record) and then for the best way to disarm a bomb. "The way you don't die, sir," replies James.

In sessions with Army psychologist Col John Cambridge (Christian Camargo), Eldridge says he expects to get killed; the doctor, who hasn't been beyond the wire, recommends viewing the war as fun. At a detonation site, Sanborn seriously considers allowing a mishap to eliminate their crazy cowboy leader, seeking his adrenaline rushes at their expense, before he gets them killed. Beneath his bed, James keeps a box of "stuff that almost killed me" taken from various sites he's disarmed.

With 23 days to go, out in the desert the team comes upon a British contractor (Ralph Fiennes) and his crew; while pinned down during an ambush and suffering three casualties, James demonstrates again his patience during adversity without anger, cooperating with Sanborn in directing fire and complimenting Eldridge ("Good job, buddy") on protecting the rear.

Back at camp they drink hard and play rough. "Everyone's a coward about something," James says to Eldridge, such as making a phone call to his wife (or are they divorced? Will's not sure, only that she's loyal) but unable to speak a word to her. Sanborn asks James: "You think I got what it takes to put on the suit?" James answers honestly.

Getting out from his desk to visit a theater of the war, Col Cambridge accompanies the EOD to a warehouse, which turns out to be an insurgent bomb-making facility with a boy's body prepared as a booby trap. Acting entirely on his own, suspecting a man selling DVDs of being an informant, James turns lone ranger on a personal mission of revenge.

Though he's most alive and aware when confronted with threats of death, James doesn't behave with careless abandon. Every assignment is a fresh test of himself in which he's compelled to put his own life on the line to save others' (when he fails, he takes the defeat personally), only he forgets sometimes that he's also endangering his companions. But then to his mind, this is what soldiers do. "How do you do it?" asks an incredulous Sanborn. "I guess I don't think about it," answers James.

During a post-blast assessment of an oil tanker in the Green Zone, James, operating on a hunch that the triggerman is still nearby and enjoying the spectacle, once again risks the lives of his men by ordering them to follow him on a haji hunt.

For James - "With me it's only one," he says to his infant son - war is the high to which he's addicted.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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