The Hurt Locker vs Point Break

’ve been having sort of an unintentional Katheryn Bigelow film fest lately. A couple weeks ago I watched Blue Steel as my insomnia movie, and found that while the dialogue is ridiculous and the plot is full of holes, Jamie Lee Curtis is cool in it (Blue Steel came out right after A Fish Called Wanda, so maybe she’s just cool, period), and it’s got a great look to it, that high-end grit of rich white people “edgy” movies, like Disclosure. Movies like that always have an executive with shiny metal desk accessories. Just a thing I’ve noticed. Anyway, Blue Steel is slick and fun and stupid, much like another Bigelow movie, Point Break, which I watched yesterday. I was so riveted, in good ways and bad, that I was late for work. Point Break has a handful of jaw-dropping action scenes—a footchase through alleys and homes; and sky-diving and surfing scenes that are documentary-level realistic. The plot is ludicrous: a rookie FBI agent goes undercover as a surfer to bust a gang of surfing bank robbers. In terms of acting, Patrick Swayze is the standout. I’m not sure he’s even giving that good of a performance, but facing off against actors like Lori Petty and Keanu Reeves (who is…um…wooden is being generous. Not good. His costumes don’t even fit.), he comes out looking pretty great. Swayze actually seems like a guy who lives at the beach surfing all day, and musters just enough menace that you believe he could rob a bank too. And hey, Anthony Kiedis cameos, as a bully on the beach.

The Hurt Locker finds Katheryn Bigelow at a new peak, and not just for her. The Hurt Locker would be an achievement for any director. Even released mid-year, it’s obvious The Hurt Locker is one of the best movies of 2009.

The Hurt Locker follows a little over a month in the lives of guys performing what has to be one of the most nerve-racking jobs in the world: disarming bombs in Baghdad. Bombs in cars, bombs in buildings, bombs in bodies both living and dead. Their self-appointed leader is William James (Jeremy Renner), who smokes and drinks too much, doesn’t follow orders, isn’t a particularly good husband or father, and is second to none at nutting up and going in there to disarm bombs. He’s reckless, but not careless, which is important. Jeremy Renner is fantastic as James. He’s taken a stock character and completely blown out our expectations of it. I’m not sure how the “big lug who’s probably a genius” looked on paper, but Renner plays it like second nature. If you’d told me The Hurt Locker was a documentary (with, okay, the best cinematography in the history of documentaries) and that William James was a real subject, I’d believe you.

The rest of the cast (including a couple well-placed cameos) is just as good. The star here, though, is Kathryn Bigelow. The Hurt Locker (which has a damn-near flawless script by Mark Boal) is directed with precision. A scene with sniper fire made me realize, after years of watching movies, that I’m used to a bit of bait and switch in most action scenes. If the gun is far enough away, you don’t hear the shot, you just feel the bullet. An unlike her action-movie peers, Bigelow is alone in delaying the explosion. Every other movie is going for the biggest, loudest, most quickly-edited explosions possible. In The Hurt Locker, an explosion is a bad thing. The best action, in the most exciting scenes, comes from the bombs that don’t blow up at all (and trust me, you don’t want to see what happens when they do, although Bigelow films that expertly as well.) How smug and satisfied Bigelow must feel running into other directors this year, knowing that the quick bucks are going to the CGI-porn of Transformers 2 and G.I. Joe, while next year’s trophies and best scripts are falling right into her lap. Hey, it’s not like she hasn’t paid her dues.

The Hurt Locker: A

Point Break: C+