Summit

It is the last month-and-a-bit of Delta Company's tour of duty in Iraq. The IED disposal squad has just lost its leader, and he is replaced by Staff Sergeant James (Jeremy Renner), a brilliant bomb defuser who is also something of a loose cannon, prone to taking foolish risks. What follows is Kathryn Bigelow's best movie to date, as finger-gnawing scenes of bomb disposal and combat alternate with portraits of men's psyches being taken apart by war, both because of what happens to them, and because of what they must do.

The best Iraq war film to date is also, interestingly, fairly apolitical. It takes no real stand on the whys and wherefores of the conflict, and despite the fact that the incidents are very much specific to the situation in Iraq, the theme of the film – the toll war takes on the men who fight it – would be just as true in a WWI setting. James is an intriguing character, one that it is difficult to wholly like or dislike. He is astoundingly good at what he does, yet he puts the lives of his squad mates in jeopardy. He believes in doing the right thing, and yet, in a speech he makes to his infant son (a scene that is the most heartbreaking of the film), he shows how he has been transformed into a specialized machine, unfit for any society other than that of war. This is a powerful film, then, as thoughtful as it is intense. That intensity, however, does come at a certain cost. We are made to feel the paranoia experienced by the soldiers in the visceral way imaginable, but what this does mean is a dehumanization of the Other. The Iraqis, with very few exceptions, come across as unknowable, mysterious, sinister presences, and while this is very likely true to the experience of the point-of-view characters, it does mean that this is another war film that (inevitably, perhaps?) grants us access to the humanity (in its positive AND negative facets) of only one side of the conflict.