Bigelow has been on critics' watch lists since her hallucinatory early films 'The Loveless' and 'Near Dark.' But until now she's never had a subject that so successfully used her gift for stylized suspense and what she calls 'heightened emotional states' as this tale of a three-man U.S. Army bomb squad (tautly portrayed by Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) deployed in the terrifying streets of Baghdad. Actually, it's unfair to burden 'The Hurt Locker' with the Iraq label. It's more of a classic study of men in combat and under stress that could have taken place almost any time, anywhere. There's no sense of winning or losing a war here, no notion of making a difference or achieving lofty geopolitical aims. By narrowing its focus to the bomb squad's specific life-or-death tasks of defusing roadside IEDs (improvised explosive devices), the film manages to expand its effectiveness as well as its relevance. Although its themes are universal, 'Hurt Locker's' specificity of action and situation are what make it compelling. Bigelow and her team bring an awesome ferocity to re-creating the unhinged mania of bomb removal in an alien, culturally unfathomable atmosphere. 'The Hurt Locker's' realism begins with the lean and compelling script by Mark Boal, a journalist and screenwriter who wrote the magazine article on which 'In the Valley of Elah' was based. Boal spent time embedded with an Army bomb squad in Iraq, and the resulting script is closely observed and sharp enough to attract, in addition to the three stars, performers of the caliber of Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes and David Morse in what essentially are supporting roles. The actors who play the bomb-squad trio are admired in the business as consummate professionals: Renner for his work in 'Dahmer' and 'North Country;' the protean Mackie for 'Half Nelson,' 'Brother to Brother' and 'Million Dollar Baby' and Geraghty for 'Bobby' and 'Jarhead.' What they accomplish here will raise their profiles considerably. 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, giving editors Bob Murawski and Chris Innis a staggering 200 hours of footage to deal with. Bigelow brought all these elements together by hewing to that venerable dramatic rubric of revealing character through action. '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 Mackie, he's a soldier who is as sane and levelheaded 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. Although 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. As this three-man squad progresses from terrifying situation to more terrifying situation, we experience not only breathless action but also the development of what might be called a philosophical rivalry between the two sergeants about the best way to be a brave and effective soldier. It's not an abstract question but is one that could determine who will live and who will die. One of the most unexpected things about 'The Hurt Locker' is that, unlike many war films, it is not interested in having you choose sides in this debate. In fact, it reveals unlooked-for aspects of all the characters, especially James, such as the sergeant's playfulness with a young Iraqi boy (Christopher Sayegh) who calls himself Beckham and says things like 'I hook you up.' Renner handles all sides of his surprisingly complex character beautifully, in a performance so good it feels like a gift. For all its realism, 'The Hurt Locker' is also a stylized film that deals in the quality of myth. While documentaries have shown that the reality of Iraq is incendiary combat interspersed with tedious down time, this film largely does without the down time, placing us in such a rapid-fire sequence of high-octane situations that we never have a chance to catch our breath. Finally, almost without our realizing it, 'The Hurt Locker' asks difficult questions about heroism's costs and demands, about what war does to soldiers, and about damage that may be impossible to rectify or repair. 