Of the four screenplays nominated for a Golden Globe this year this one caught my eye. Written by Mark Boal (In the Valley of Elah) The Hurt Locker is about a bomb disposal squad working in present day Iraq.

The main characters are Sergeant James and his subordinates Sanborn and Eldridge. Basically the conflict comes from the fact that James has no fear and his subordinates are constantly worried that James is needlessly putting their lives in jeopardy.

The story flowed fairly well and there weren’t too many flat spots. In fact it was so well paced I managed to skip through the whole thing in one sitting, which is unusual for me when it comes to reading features. I enjoyed the economical writing style and thought the descriptions of the action and the landscape were spot on. The formatting was good too and well worth checking out. Although the writer was prone to the odd “we see” type of descriptions.

I also found the initial descriptions of the main characters too brief as they didn’t paint a very clear picture of them. In fact the writer didn’t even say what their ages were supposed to be, (but it was a shooting draft) and he tended to break the show don’t tell guideline by describing how the characters felt in situations without offering any visual cues. With the exception of Sergeant James, who was revealed to be an adrenaline junkie as the story went on, there wasn’t much of a character arc for the two supporting characters and this made the story fall a little flat for me. However, the scenes where the guys had to defuse the bombs planted by insurgents were impressive and tense.


All in all this didn’t have enough action to be considered a good war story and the characters weren’t complex enough to call it a good drama either.

It’s solid but not great.