The Hurt Locker: A Veteran's Take

The Iraq War finally has inspired a movie that has received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture -- The Hurt Locker. The story focuses on three soldiers of an explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) team who face death in Iraq on a daily basis.

The main characters are portrayed as conflicted individuals; soldiers who are vulnerable to losing their sense of humanity as they face intense fear on the streets of Baghdad while trying to dispose of roadside bombs.

Having served in Iraq, I found it easy for my defense mechanisms to focus on the details, rather than on the human story that it attempts to convey -- which is by far the film's greatest strength.

'Hurt locker' is a phrase used to describe a really bad place. It's a place a person goes after being severely injured. The phrase seems to allude to a physical injury or death, but it carries greater weight in the context of this movie. The hurt locker also seems to describe the mental state that war creates in many soldiers.

A quote at the beginning of the film states that "war is a drug". This narrative is captured through the portrayal of Sergeant First Class William James, a sort of renegade non-commissioned officer who appears both somewhat reckless, and yet, extremely calculating as a bomb disposal specialist.

Sergeant James first enters the story after the bomb disposal team loses its leader in a botched mission. The previous team leader loses his life even as he displays text-book tactics in approaching a mission. Sergeant James seems comparatively reckless and is viewed as unpredictable by his new team, which includes two other soldiers, Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge.

The movie is action packed -- behind every corner is another threat that the viewer expects to finally claim the life of the protagonist. Throughout the film, Sanborn and Eldridge wrestle with the tension and danger that their leader so readily embraces. The junior members of the team are forced on the same journey as Sergeant James. At first they fear for Sergeant James's life. Very soon, however, they begin to focus on their own.

The youngest of the team, Specialist Eldridge, maintains a sort of youthful innocence through his combat experience. You get the sense that Eldridge could reintegrate into civilian society easily. The more senior and experienced Sergeant Sanborn seems more troubled than his younger counterpart and grapples with a decision throughout his tour -- either let go of fear and become more like Sergeant James, or get out of the game.

This drew me in closely -- to let go of fear and embrace the love of adrenaline, is it necessary to let go of other loves and possibly loved ones? With each mission to defuse road-side bombs, Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge choose to let go of their mortality to some degree, and hence their sense of humanity. If they don't, they risk losing their minds and ability to function as soldiers.

The film also explores, what I believe to be, more ironic aspects of the combat environment.

Lieutenant Colonel Cambridge is an Army doctor who offers psychological support to Specialist Eldridge. It is ironic, that the seemingly normal Eldridge is in the most need of support, since the young soldier would most likely function normally in civilian society. Sergeant James and Sanborn seem to have less in common from those in civilian society after years in military service. Yet, in war, we need our troops to function under extreme stress. It is not natural behavior and explains much of the difficulty soldiers face when readjusting to civilian life.

At one point, the young Eldridge invites Colonel Cambridge, who rarely leaves the safety of Camp Victory, to accompany the team on a mission. The doctor's clinical knowledge of the combat environment is eventually tested by the gruesome reality of war. By the end, it is apparent that the younger Eldridge better understands that there is no effective way to face the prospect of death in combat.

The end of the movie is most poignant to me, as we see a soldier used to the stress of combat take on the mundane task of picking out a box of cereal at a grocery store after returning home. Many combat veterans live the same reality -- coming home to a vastly different environment after dealing with the stress of combat.

In this way, a veteran might take for granted the scenes that civilian film watchers will find so moving.

By the end of the film, the audience comes to appreciate that the experience isn't something that happens overseas -- the characters have real lives at home. Since I was there, I'm not sure whether that makes my take more or less valid. What I can say for sure is that some of underlying themes caused me to reflect on my own journey through combat and readjustment.

I can't help but wonder -- Is it possible that every soldier that serves in combat leaves a part of themselves in the hurt locker?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ryan McDermott.