In a sense, explosions have lost their danger in modern Hollywood. Too many pretty CGI fireballs have rendered us numb to the reality that a real explosive is dirty, loud, and dangerous. So Kathryn Bigelow, upon making a movie about real-life bomb defusal, needed to re-establish the IED (Improvised Explosive Device) as the principal antagonist of her film. This 2009 Best Picture Winner is festooned with scenes of exquisite suspense involving the protagonist Sgt. First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), but none of these scenes would hold any weight if the cold open doesn't work as well as it does. When the first bomb goes off, cinematographer Barry Ackroyd captures the dirt lifting off the ground in extreme slow motion, allowing the audience to watch in horror as the placid road comes to life with death, killing the explosives ordinance officer nearby and sending his squad-mates into panic. Not only are the shots in this scene visually striking and terrifying, they also serve a distinct thematic purpose showing how violence, especially the sudden and unpredictable violence of the Iraq war, disrupts and disturbs the entire world around it.
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
