Movies: Kathryn Bigelow's ultimate rush

Into this summer-movie season of situation "comedies" and toy-story sequels comes a genuine surprise -- an Iraq war drama that's neither tear-jerking nor flag-waving, preachy nor pacifist, but intense, engrossing and suspenseful as a ticking time bomb.

Another twist: "The Hurt Locker," based on the stories of U.S. Army bomb-squad technicians in Baghdad (and opening Friday at the Uptown in Minneapolis), is made by a director, Kathryn Bigelow, who's more than happy to acknowledge her collaborators.

"I'm the lucky beneficiary of some wonderful material and firsthand reporting, a great script and a great cast and crew," Bigelow said by phone recently. "They make a director look good."

Yes, but hasn't this director always looked good?

Trained as a painter in the 1970s, Bigelow, whose best known film is the surf's-up thrill-fest "Point Break" (with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves), has been making visually gorgeous odes to adrenaline junkies for a quarter-century.

What's different about "The Hurt Locker" -- provocatively so -- is that this time the subject of Bigelow's infectiously pumped-up style is one we've been trained to think of as not exactly entertaining.

Asked what it means to have made a war movie that's as pulse-quickening as "The Hurt Locker," the director again defers to the work of others.

"My intent was to humanize the soldiers, to look at this conflict from their point of view, through their eyes," she said. "So if you report feeling adrenalized by the film, then hopefully what you're commenting on is the soldiers' experience, and not a filmmaker's tricks."

Indeed, "The Hurt Locker" wants us to feel something of what it's like to be a Baghdad bomb tech -- to wear a heavy "protective suit" in hundred-degree heat, to keep a steady hand amid constant sniper fire while trying to defuse an improvised explosive device (IED) before it blows.

War as drug

Written by war correspondent Mark Boal, who was embedded with a U.S. Army bomb squad in Iraq in 2004, Bigelow's movie starts with a quote about the addictive quality of war, then renders that quality in a propulsive style that's appropriately tough to resist.

Ridding itself of a name actor in the first few minutes (how's that for realism?), the film focuses on a three-member team of EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) experts led by Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), a compulsive daredevil who seems to get a physiological charge out of extreme danger.

"You or I or virtually any other person on the planet would run away from an IED," Bigelow said. "But these individuals -- in a volunteer military -- actually walk toward the threat. That's a unique personality."

Not in Bigelow's oeuvre, though. From "The Loveless" and "Near Dark" to "Point Break" and "Strange Days," this director has been drawn to characters -- bikers and vampires, "ultimate rush"-seeking surfers and virtual-reality "jackers" -- who are compelled to shoot for the outer limits of human experience.

Surely the standard film-as-battlefield metaphor would be useful in characterizing the 57-year-old director as a compulsive shooter in her own right.

But Bigelow, seeming to respect the gravity of her latest subject, would rather leave herself out of such discussion.

"When [Boal] was in Baghdad, he certainly encountered a myriad of personalities," she said. "But when he came back and related all of these extraordinary stories of people who arguably have the most dangerous job in the world, he wrote a script that looked at extreme examples of bravery and courage and heroism -- and at the costs and effects of war at the same time."

For all its visceral punch, "The Hurt Locker" does quite a number on the head, as well. Particularly those inclined to view the war in Iraq as a mess of tragic proportions -- and Iraq war movies as two-hour renditions of a bugler playing taps -- are forced as if at gunpoint to reflect on the startling degree of excitement that Bigelow's film delivers. War is hell, but here's a war movie that's a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

"It's always been a real goal of both [Boal] and myself to be able to combine entertainment and substance," said Bigelow, who believes these forces are rarely allowed to fight on the same side. "Usually, a movie is either a job for the audience to endure or a tool to turn their brains off. We wanted to strike a tonal balance that would serve both ends of the spectrum."

To what end? To further the cause of freedom in movies?

"As we speak, the conflict in Iraq is still going on. Men and women are out there risking their lives. Perhaps the film can be an opportunity to remind us of that."