'The Hurt Locker'

Helping the actors dig into themselves are aspects of the way "The Hurt Locker" was shot by Barry Ackroyd, who did similarly impeccable verite work on "United 93." First, most of the film was photographed in the at times 130 degree heat and dust of Amman, Jordan, a city with physical similarities to parts of Baghdad. Second, Bigelow chose to shoot with four hand-held cameras working simultaneously -- a scenario similar to the one Jonathan Demme used on "Rachel Getting Married" -- which gave editors Bob Murawski and Chris Innis a staggering 200 hours of footage to deal with.

Director Bigelow brought all these elements together by hewing to that venerable dramatic rubric of revealing character through action. We learn almost all we need to know about these men not through what they say but through what they do in a series of mind-bending situations. What comes to light is not only individual traits but also different attitudes to crises, separate but surprisingly equal definitions of what we talk about when we're talking about heroism and courage.

"The Hurt Locker" is structured around the 38 days the three men in the EOD (for Explosive Ordnance Disposal) squad have left in their rotation in Iraq. Men like Spc. Owen Eldridge (Geraghty) know all too well that every new day is potentially one they will not survive. They all want to avoid the hurt locker, the place where bad things happen.

The veteran of the group is Sgt. J.T. Sanborn. As played by the always excellent Mackie, he's a soldier who is as sane and level-headed as the situation allows. His job is to keep everybody safe and to communicate with the team leader, the guy who puts on the 140-pound protective suit and goes in to defuse the bombs knowing that no suit will protect him once he gets close to the device and enters the kill zone.

Though Eldridge and Sanborn have been in the Army and in Iraq for some time, they've never met anyone like their new leader, Staff Sgt. William James (Renner). A true fatalist whose first act is to remove the protective plywood around his bunk to let the light in, James just wants to get in there and handle it, no questions asked.

Nerveless, fearless, reckless, willing to do without any number of safety devices, including the suit, James is simultaneously a hot-shot action junkie who gets high on adrenaline and a cool, extremely accomplished technician who relishes the intellectual challenge of figuring out what makes a particular bomb tick. Literally.