The things that nearly killed him

There have been many movies about the war in Iraq, but The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow may be the first to explain why men go to war. Bigelow strips away the politics, rhetoric, and myth-making to arrive at a basic truth of the human condition: War is intoxicating. It produces an adrenaline rush like nothing else. War gives you meaning and purpose. It is when you are in the teeth of death that you feel most furiously alive.

When the danger has passed and you’ve come down from your high, what do you do with yourself? There lies the problem.

Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) keeps a box under his bed full of fuses, wires, and bomb parts: the things that nearly killed him. He has disarmed 873 bombs, and the next one will probably be his last.

Yet he swaggers towards what could be his doom, takes the helmet off his protective suit, and declares that if he’s going to die, he will die comfortable.

Is he crazy? No. James is very good at what he does; he is perfectly aware of the danger. It’s war that’s crazy: it turns everything upside down so crazy is normal and normal is crazy. So he holds off death another time, but how does he deal with the rush?

He drinks a lot. He and his fellow soldiers punch each other stupid.

He plays video games and heavy metal music loud enough to make his ears bleed. Mostly he waits for his next fix and he will get it, even if he has to look for it. This man has been rendered unfit for peace.

When you’ve turned a man into an efficient combat machine, how can you send him back to the supermarket to buy cereal?

 The Hurt Locker is so intense, you may find your nails digging out the stuffing from your seat. It is the best action film in years, with as many explosions as any blockbuster, except that these explosions aren’t there for entertainment.

Bigelow opens her film with a lesson in screen geography. Sgt. Thompson (Guy Pearce) is detonating a bomb at the end of a long, empty street. On both sides of the street buildings full of people who could trigger the bomb remotely. (The Iraqis are always watching with inscrutable faces, like spectators at the theater, while the Americans yell and run about.) Behind him are the two men in his squad. Straight ahead under a pile of rubbish is the bomb.

We know that the suit is heavy and he can’t run fast in it. We know that after he rigs the bomb he has to get out of the kill zone. We know the minimum safe distance. And we know because Bigelow told us exactly what would happen. Our knowledge doesn’t take away the suspense, it magnifies it. The director has struck a deal with the viewer, and she delivers.

How do you tell the audience about the thrill of war? You don’t — that would just be macho posturing. Bigelow plunks us down in the middle of the action so we can taste the desert heat and feel the sand in our mouths. We stagger out of the theater two hours later, exhilarated and slightly nauseous.

The Hurt Locker does not moralize, manipulate, or indulge in cheap sentiment. Above all it does not romanticize death. When death comes, and it always does, there is neither blaze of glory nor heavenly chorus. It is quick, pointless, and final.

After some time in the field with Sgt. James and Bravo Company, we begin to understand why men wage war. They do it not for love of country, or riches (or oil) or honor; they do it because it is the most intense experience of their lives. Even as it revels in this brutal truth, The Hurt Locker reminds us that choosing death is no way to live.

* * *

The Informant! is a trip through the mine-infested mental landscape of one Mark Whitacre, a biochemist and executive at a major American food manufacturing company. When first we see him, he is the picture of the upright citizen: a family man with a nice family, a big house (he’s building stables), and a great job. But that exclamation point in the title is there for a reason, and an in-form Steven Soderbergh gleefully shows us why.

Whitacre is a pale, tubby man with a flamboyant toupee — he’s the kind of man who thinks his wig fools everybody. A clue! Then there’s the look of the film: it’s set in the early 1990s, but the locations look like sets for a 1970s family sitcom like The Brady Bunch. Or a TV commercial for a breakfast cereal. And there’s something off-kilter about the Marvin Hamlisch score, which leads us to expect debonair men sipping martinis by the jacuzzi.

Most tellingly: Why are the thoughts running through Whitacre’s head — we hear them in voice-overs — so far removed from what he’s actually saying and doing? Is there a disconnect here? You betcha. One of the pleasures of watching The Informant! is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. If you think you’re confused, then you’re exactly on the right track.

Matt Damon is terrific as Whitacre, a man who may be a white-hat hero for truth and corporate ethics, a dork who fancies himself a white hat, a very smart but clueless man, a whistle-blower with shady dealings, a fabulist, bipolar, or all of the above.

Damon has become the twisted embodiment of the American Dream: the self-invented man. In The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Departed he played characters who said one thing in all apparent sincerity while making us understand that he was lying through his perfect teeth. In the Bourne movies he had no idea who he was; his survival depended on improvisational skills and a talent for violence.

Here Damon packs on weight and adds years to his looks, for which he will be lavishly praised. In Hollywood where everyone is required to look perfect, daring to look fat and ugly is viewed as the highest form of acting, one that often leads to Oscars. But anyone can put on 40 pounds and age 10 years; it’s the intelligence in Damon’s eyes that cannot be faked. His expression may be placid to the point of blankness, but you can see the calculation there, almost hear his synapses pinging. (Compare with the previous All-American guy Tom Cruise. Look into his eyes. What do you see? Um... uh... well...)

Damon is surrounded by excellent actors who provide us with priceless reaction shots. The looks on their faces as they absorb Whitacre’s latest revelations save Soderbergh hours of exposition. Whitacre may fancy himself a clever puppet master, but there is one puppet master here, and it’s Steven Soderbergh.

Soderbergh is one of those filmmakers who resist being pegged, to the annoyance of critics and the befuddlement of viewers. He’s had misfires, but when he’s on, the films are so much fun they’re practically criminal. Take Out of Sight, his adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel, in which he achieved the near-impossible: Jennifer Lopez showing screen chemistry with a human being (Granted, it was George Clooney).

The Informant! is Soderbergh’s portrait of an incorrigible fictionist who can’t get his own plotlines straight, and the fact that it’s based on a true story by Kurt Eichenwald makes it even more amazing.

It’s thrilling to watch a director in complete control of his material. In one scene the voice in Whitacre’s head and the voice issuing from his mouth start saying the same things: the facts have caught up with our, um, hero! A look of surprise spreads across Whitacre’s face as he realizes that the jig is up — he’s telling the truth. But is he, really? Are we sure?