We've been reviewing war movies on this podcast for nearly a year and a half now and it's hard to believe that we have previously only reviewed one film that dealt with one of America's current wars.

That other time was Green Zone, the Jason Bourne emails Judith Miller and solves the Bush administration film from 2010. and institutions put in play to make a point about the lies that got us into that conflict and

that film seemed to lose track of the humanity of its characters because what it wanted

to do more than anything was make a point about the war.

Today's film released two years earlier than that in 2008 is all about interrogating its

characters and their strengths and flaws and the ways that the war has changed them as people.

The central relationships in the film are between Jeremy Renner Anthony Mackie and Brian Garrity,

a three-man bomb squad operating primarily in Baghdad as a rapid response team called out to diffuse

IEDs on a daily basis. And Renner's character is a bit unusual in the war film genre because he's the new guy who is at the top of the hierarchy

and at the bottom.

He's also a total action junkie, a fact that the film underlines with an opening quote about the war being a drug.

The squad has to learn to work together under needle-pegging stress and because he's so cranked out on the action,

Renner's character is not the best

at communicating with his squadmates.

A lot of reasonable criticism was leveled

against this film by soldiers who observed

the character's total disregard for real world safety procedures that are

practiced by squads that do this work. And the story makes the case for the Hot Dogg and Bomb Tech,

which we know now, just isn't a thing because that type of guy and anyone standing nearby wouldn't last very long.

But this movie was very successful at the box office. It wasn't a smash hit like American sniper or

anything but it did very well and had an impressive showing at the Oscars that

year. One reason for that is the film's direction and director.

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