The Hurt Locker does not finesse its subject, so we'll be just as plain-speaking.  

Kathryn Bigelow's explosive, edge-of-the-seat thriller is one of the best war movies ever made.  After years in the wilderness, the director's stunning return to form is set, fittingly enough, in the arid landscape of a scorched Iraq.

Shooting on the border of the troubled country itself, she has taken her preoccupation with strong, reckless men ensnared in hazardous environments and found the perfect arena in which to play it out.

The result is an extraordinary, potent, drug-mouthed and clenched-buttocks tour of duty with an embedded US bomb squad.  Imagine Full Metal Jacket meets The Wire.

Not even bothering with opening credits, the film bristles with a documentary authenticity.  Scriptwriter  and Rolling Stone journalist Mark Boal spent time with a EOD team in Baghdad, the background cast are Iraqi refugees, and that's a real bomb suit lead Jeremy Renner is strapped into, performing through temperatures of 60 degrees centigrade. 

United 93 cinematographer Barry Ackroyd's brightly lit visuals capture every background movement, where even a mobile phone can become a weapon of mass destruction, ratcheting up the paranoia to near-unbearable levels. 

Starting off with a literal bang felt deep in the pit of the stomach, and setting out her "famous cast members aren't safe" stall straight away, Bigelow understands bomb disposal in possibly the most dangerous city on Earth is drama enough to do away with slick visuals.

Defusing a car bomb, while inscrutable Iraqis gather on neighbouring balconies, videoing the three team members, is a suspense masterclass where even a bit of business with a windscreen wiper puts the heart in the mouth.

At the other end of the scale, an encounter with a sqaud of British mercenaries led by a cameoing Ralph Fiennes, and a subsequent sniper stand-off with entrenched insurgents takes on an air of near serenity.  Over the course of an afternoon, the two sides methodically sight their targets, narrowing the margin of error, and although death hovers over them, the splintering ricochet of a near-miss is more galling.

The calm centre of all this is Renner's Staff Sgt. William James, a rock n' roll adrenalin junky in love with the thrill of going up against a hundreds of pounds of potential carnage, smile on the face as he literally sets about finding what makes his adversary tick.

A likeable, charismatic presence, James effortlessly gets along with the locals, notably a spunky bootleg DVD hawking kid, and whose insouciance in the heat of the moment is an irresistible blend of John Wayne and James Dean.

But, James' team members, the by-the-book Sanborn (Mackie, the audience's anchor) and twitchy Eldridge (Geraghty, the audience's reactions) don't appreciate the apparent cowboy tactics, particularly in a nightmarish scene when the Staff Sgt. insists they go off the reservation to find those responsible for an apparent suicide bombing.

Avoiding big statements, or political point-scoring, Bigelow and Boal look to Oliver Stone's Platoon and keep it purely grunt-eyed.  And like Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (and even 2001), Bigelow depicts the hostile terrain as an alien, frightening wonderland.

A place where IEDs are sewn into dead bodies, where innocents have bombs bolted to them and are pushed toward the occupying forces, and where life can be lived at a pitch beyond anything offered back home.

The first great film about Iraq II, The Hurt Locker looks, sounds, and feels right.  It won't boost army recruitment, but it's one of 2009's must-see movies.

Rob Daniel