Earlier than the MCU Was a Factor, Jeremy Renner & Anthony Mackie Led This Finest Image-Successful Motion Film

The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which formally commenced in 2008 with the primary Iron Man movie, has turn out to be so commercially and culturally ubiquitous that it’s straightforward to neglect that lots of its stars have been already well-known even earlier than they made their MCU debuts. Within the case of actors Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie — who play Clint Barton (a.okay.a. Hawkeye) and Sam Wilson (a.okay.a. Falcon/Captain America), respectively, within the MCU — their profiles have been already excessive in 2008 attributable to their starring roles in The Harm Locker. The Harm Locker tells the suspenseful story of a small squadron of American troopers deployed in Iraq, who’re tasked with defusing and disposing of explosive ordnance planted by insurgents.

The Harm Locker dominated the 2010 Academy Awards, profitable six awards, together with Finest Image and Finest Director, the latter of which made Kathryn Bigelow the primary girl to win the award. It additionally earned Renner an Oscar nomination for Finest Actor. Nonetheless, the movie additionally elicited robust criticism from veterans of the Iraq Conflict, together with many bomb disposal specialists, who claimed that its characters and storyline have been grossly unrealistic. Nonetheless, if nothing else, the movie gives an interesting sneak peek of the chemistry that Renner and Mackie would show seven years later within the MCU in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), their first joint look within the MCU.

A Tense and Unstable Partnership

Avengers followers watching The Harm Locker is perhaps stunned by the connection between Mackie and Renner within the latter. Regardless of ostensibly being on the identical facet, Sergeant First Class William James (Renner) and Sergeant JT Sanborn (Mackie) persistently discover themselves at odds throughout their missions. The first explanation for their battle is James’ insistence on defusing bombs himself with out adequately speaking along with his compatriots, typically even eradicating his headset or detonating a smoke grenade to stop them from seeing or speaking to him.

Taking Sanborn’s facet, James’ maverick and reckless strategy was extraordinarily controversial amongst Iraq Conflict veterans, lots of whom noticed the movie’s portrayal of their work as unrealistic and even disrespectful. In keeping with a evaluation by the Air Pressure Instances, for instance, a number of veterans of bomb squads in Iraq characterised the movie as “grossly exaggerated and never acceptable” and asserted that an individual with James’ “run and gun cowboy” angle would by no means be put answerable for a bomb squad in the true world.

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Alternatively, The Harm Locker‘s unrealistic depiction of fight may in and of itself be learn as a sort of commentary on what number of American civilians seen the Iraq Conflict. Given the prevalence of gung-ho “powerful man” protagonists within the historical past of American conflict films — particularly these performed by actors like John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone — William James’ character will surely not be unfamiliar to an American viewers.

However, not like many of those conflict films, which glorify the badass and hyper-individualistic nature of their most important characters on the expense of their strictly by-the-book counterparts, The Harm Locker frames James’ conduct as harmful and unprofessional. We see a number of scenes during which James instantly endangers the lives of his fellow troops, together with one occasion the place one in every of James’ silly escapades results in the third member of James and Sanborn’s crew, Squadron Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Gegharty), being captured and almost killed by native insurgents.

Veterans are definitely right that somebody like William James would by no means be allowed on a fight mission. However maybe the purpose of The Harm Locker is to point out us why we ought to be grateful they don’t seem to be.

The Issue of Coming Dwelling for Veterans

The psychologial turmoil skilled by veterans when coming residence from service is a well-liked storyline for Hollywood, being the first focus of Finest Image winners The Finest Years of Our Lives (1946) and The Deer Hunter (1978), to not point out different acclaimed movies like Coming Dwelling (1978) and Thank You for Your Service (2017). Regardless of going down virtually fully in Iraq, The Harm Locker touches on this very theme in its ending, during which James returns residence from Iraq to re-unite along with his ex-wife (Evangeline Lilly) and their child son, solely to seek out the seemingly easy job of choosing a field of cereal from the aisle of a grocery retailer daunting and agonizing.

Regardless of its usually unfavourable reception amongst veterans, the grocery retailer scene is the one portion of The Harm Locker that rang true for a lot of of them. For instance, James Clark of Process & Objective described this scene as by far the very best and most relatable scene in your entire movie and located it resonant along with his personal expertise returning residence from deployment.

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This scene can also be notable for permitting the viewers to see him in a distinct mild. Prior thus far, Renner performed a personality who’s total not terribly completely different from the character he would later play within the MCU: powerful, stoic, brave, and just a little hotheaded. However, within the grocery retailer, James shows vulnerability and concern, two feelings that aren’t as closely related to Hawkeye. As temporary as it’s, it isn’t unreasonable to suppose that Renner’s wordless however emotionally highly effective facial efficiency on this scene might need contributed essentially the most to his receiving an Oscar nomination greater than another.

In closing, whereas The Harm Locker is probably not for everybody, it’s definitely prone to curiosity Avengers followers, lay Oscar historians, or conflict film buffs (who’re tolerant of historic inaccuracies). It’s accessible to be streamed without spending a dime on Amazon Prime Video and Plex.