The Hurt Locker

It's hard enough to make an action flick.

Action, meaning explosive and reckless; casualties are collateral damage. Present but distant danger.

But it's tougher to generate genuine fear. It's the suspense factor, featuring omnipresent danger - yet willingly clamoring into it, not knowing its spark or its exact whereabouts.

The Hurt Locker is more than suspense, it's suspense on HGH, it's one that's filmed so unflatteringly that there is no savior, no hero. Just survival, no glitz, no glory.

The one thing that is recognizable is Staff Sgt. William James' adrenaline rush as he recklessly throws himself into Iraq's hot-zone, where children and elders are equally capable of demolishing an entire block.

It's his recklessness, his cocky demeanor, his provincial view of life and death that give reason to the film's opening line: "War is a drug."

It's the different personalities that underline the uneasiness of war, guilt regret and hate. Dedication, pride victory and life. Style, skill smarts and no remorse.

Adrenaline.

Director Kathryn Bigelow knows the differences. These three personalities entwine to pool personalities that color war, not label it as good vs. evil.

In a sense, it's an explanation.

How some return and cannot function normally because it's too overwhelming.

How some come back without function.

How some return for the sake of their own survival.

In it's two hour span, The Hurt Locker makes sense of why war is a drug.

And why some flounder and some flourish.