.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

A friend once told me that the sign of a good film is if you continue to think about the movie days after your viewing.

If that is the case, The Hurt Locker must be a great one.

I had the privilege of seeing The Hurt Locker almost a year ago. Last September the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival where I was lucky enough to secure a golden ticket.

And that was no small feat. The Hurt Locker was one of the more anticipated films in last year's festival. Directed by Katherine Bigelow (Near Dark, Point Break), who has always had a flare for the visual, The Hurt Locker follows a bomb squad in Iraq, arguably the most dangerous profession outside of Amy Winehouse's drug abuse sponsor.

The Hurt Locker surrounds three army soldiers: Sergeant JT Sandborn (Anthony Mackie), Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) and Owen Eldridge (Brain Geragthy). These three men have jobs that made my hands shake just reaching in for my popcorn and do it with the precision and confidence of a Tiger Woods drive on the 72nd hole.

As J.T. and Owen get placed under the command of Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) with the death of their former Sergeant Matt Thomspn (Guy Pearce) they are placed in even more perilous positions as day after day in their 365 day tour is filled with nail biting, bomb-defusing nervousness. Bombs are hidden in the ground, strapped to martyrs, placed in the back of cars and even placed inside the dead boy of a young boy. And through it all, Bigelow gives the audience exactly what it craves - the most intense and heart-pounding scenes put to film this year - as she leaves nothing to the imagination as the team diffuses (or attempts to) each new device.

The Hurt Locker is a war movie, but it is first and foremost an action film. At least that is what the studio hopes you will buy into. Iraqi and Afghanistan based films have been box office bombs (no pun intended) over the past few years. Stop-Loss, The Kingdom and Home of the Brave are just a few examples of Hollywood attempts to get us interested in the same stories we see every time we turn on CNN or 60 Minutes.

Bigelow doesn't seem to care much about the genre's predecessors. From the opening scene with the explosion of a detonated bomb where the shockwave and the effects of the blast are seen in the most minute of detail, Bigelow assures her audience that they are there to witness two plus hours of adrenaline fueled bravado and deep emotional loss.

There are many familiar faces in The Hurt Locker. In and out of the film are actors David Morse, Evangeline Lilly and Ralph Fiennes. But where other directors might have cast more familiar names and faces for the purposes of just having their name on the poster, Bigelow uses each of the appearances for the direct purpose of keeping the story moving and the characters interesting in each of their own particular elements.

Wherein Public Enemies was one of the few very good films released this summer (Star Trek being another), The Hurt Locker is without question the best. It's been a long time since I have sat on the edge of me seat for an entire film but through each and every adrenaline laced scene in The Hurt Locker, I was hooked like a prized bass.

By the end, The Hurt Locker gives us one of the best (definitely top three) Iraqi war / action films of all time. Wherein the dry landscape can at times - in the hands of lesser directors - be boring and plain, Bigelow instead gives us a fantastic film and the absolute first do-not-miss of the year.