Ralph Fiennes and David Morse make delightful cameos that lampoon the madness and meanness of the Iraq conflict, Fiennes as a bounty hunter capturing and killing high-value targets and Morse as a colonel who clearly sees the war as something of a mix between a great ball game and divine retribution.
It is the attitudes of the men faced with the challenge of surviving, rather than the ebb and flow of the conflict or any wider moral issues of whether the West should be involved in the conflict at all, that dominate the film. In this sense, it is a surprisingly intimate film, despite its big war zone setting.
Bigelow is no stranger to big movies about men, having directed K-19: The Widowmaker in 2002, but it is the psychology of the characters, rather than the window dressing of military style that interests her. Going head-to-head with ex-husband James Cameron, with his big-budget, big-spectacle picture Avatar at the Oscars, it is natural to cheer the success of the less ostentatious production. The Hurt Locker has the advantage of being a thoughtful film that still has its share of suspense, and deploys old-fashioned storytelling that ties up the narrative neatly without providing any easy answers.
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