While driving around the area prior to buying our home, we drove past Mimmo’s Pizza, a plain, run-of-the-mill lookin’ pizza place located at 240 Nutt Road. I was first struck by the seemingly awkward name of the joint. “How in the hell do you pronounce that?” I thought, “Is it Mim-o’s or does it rhyme with the name of the lost clown fish in that Pixar movie?” After we bought our home and began the moving in process, the need for prepared food quickly became mandatory and Mimmo’s was literally a stone’s throw away. I really didn’t know what to expect until I walked in and saw a very familiar face… Mimmo.
Mimmo used to work at Tony’s Pizza in Audubon, where I grew up and I regularly housed their pies (Friday or Saturday nights were usually pizza nights with the parentals). Tony’s Pizza had a thin crust, the perfect amount of cheese to sauce and an air bubble in the crust that me and my two brothers always fought over (I, being the youngest, always lost out unless I got to get my slice first). When I was growing up, Tony’s was one of those pizza places owned and operated by guys who looked and sounded like they just came off the boat from Italy. It’s pretty rare to come across that anymore (Sal’s Pizza Box, I’m looking in your direction), but Mimmo does a majority of the dough slingin himself and only has a driver and another cook (Mimmo’s wife works with him as well).
Anyway, if Mimmo’s pies were anything like Tony’s I knew I was going to be a happy camper. Needless to say, Mimmo didn’t disappoint, and my tastebuds were taken back to the days of my youth. Fortunately I have since learned to avoid being too zestful of an eater after first opening the box and thus avoiding the dreaded burn on the roof of the mouth, but it was hard to fight that urge when realizing this was almost the EXACT same pie I knew and loved growing up.
Mimmo stayed true to his roots with the thickness of the crust and cheese to sauce ratio (slightly more cheese than sauce). The bottom crust is relatively thin and is not too generous around the ends, thereby making the whole slice edible or with nominal waste if abandon the end. The sauce is not too sweet and well spiced with oregano. I may be going letting my partiality for my childhood pizza get in the way of this, but I would stand firmly behind my assertion that Mimmo’s is one of the best pies in town.
I’ve been dragged to most of the recent Iraq war movies, and some of them have been interesting and informative, but they all have one thing in common: a somber, self-important, condescending attitude about the horrors and futility of war. The problem is that I already know all this going in. What I want to see is some explanation. If war is so horrible, why does everyone keep making war movies? Why on earth should we watch them? Certainly it’s not to change anyone’s mind, because these movies generally preach to the converted. But finally, here comes Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, and it does something that all the others fail to do. It considers the dangerous idea that, indeed, war can be fun.
The movie is a good deal closer in spirit to the action-oriented war movies of the 1940s and 1950s, with their gung-ho attitude and intense male bonding; films of the kind that Samuel Fuller and Don Siegel used to make. (And make no mistake: Kathryn Bigelow is one of the finest living directors of male-bonding genre films.) I’m not saying that The Hurt Locker made me want to sign up and jet off to Iraq, but it did not have an agenda and did not preach to me. It did that rarest of rare things in American movies: it allowed me to form my own ideas. It’s a simple, straightforward presentation, but in nearly every shot comes an odd duality: this sucks, and this is cool.
In a great performance, Jeremy Renner (Dahmer, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) plays the movie’s lynchpin, Staff Sergeant William James of the Army bomb squad. It’s 2004, and Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) have a little over a month to the end of their tour. When they lose their regular sergeant to an explosion, James is sent in as a replacement. James has a little of John Wayne in him. He straps on the heavy bomb suit and marches into danger without any of the caution of his commander. When the helmet gets too hot during his intricate work, he simply removes it. If the radio is squawking too much, he turns it off. He’s at his coolest, most focused and most imperturbable during the job, while fiddling with live bombs.
But in his off hours, he’s like a trapped raccoon, with a vaguely sad, vaguely maniacal expression on his face. Like Sanborn and Eldridge, we’re never sure if we like him, or if we can trust him, or if we should stay away from him. After one particularly precarious day, the three men relax in their bunk with some drinking and horseplay. After a few minutes, the horseplay gets rougher, with James suddenly crossing the line. But in battle, he’s a champ. During one tense scene in which the trio — and some British allies — is under fire from a distant sniper, the time drags by and the men get thirstier and woozier. James and Sanborn are on a ridge, watching, while Eldridge attempts to fetch a packet of juice from the supplies below. James takes the juice, opens it, and gives the entire thing to Sanborn, taking nothing for himself.
Bigelow presents James as the movie’s center, but we watch him through Sanborn and Eldridge’s eyes; they’re both like any other solider you would expect. They hate Iraq. It’s too hot, and it’s a mess and they want to go home, but they’re understandably fascinated by James. He shows them his secret box full of bits and pieces of bombs that almost killed him (the “hurt locker” of the title), his only real keepsakes, and perhaps the only things by which he can measure his life. At the same time, we see a few scenes of James on his own, befriending a young Iraqi boy who sells DVDs in a market, and taking it personally when the boy later turns up dead. These scenes are equally fascinating, with his motivations remaining equally mysterious.
As a war movie, The Hurt Locker can be thrilling. Bigelow’s set pieces are exquisitely timed and perfectly built. In one scene, she escalates tension merely by showing more and more Iraqi spectators turning up on their front porches to watch James dismantle a wired car. In another — shown in the trailer — James finds a bomb buried in the sand, traces the trip wire and comes up with half a dozen more bombs just like it. (His reaction is perfect: “oh boy…”). Bigelow shoots largely with hand-held cameras, but not surprisingly, she knows precisely how to do it, emphasizing the emotional turmoil but making the space and action perfectly clear. Most Hollywood hacks simply shake their cameras around, mistakenly thinking that simulated chaos and actual chaos are the same thing.
Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal tell the story in a series of episodes, much like Samuel Fuller’s WWII masterpiece The Big Red One (1980). This allows the characters to develop and each set piece to unfold in its own time, with its own mood, without concern for villains or subplots or forward thrust. There are several supporting characters played by recognizable stars, but they each leave the movie as quickly as they entered it. It’s as if Bigelow is suggesting that there are other movies just beyond this one, and we could go in that direction, but we won’t. Yes, there’s a bigger picture, but where we’re going is more unusual. The proof is that Boal – who spent lots of time researching and writing in Iraq — also wrote what would become Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah (2007), but Haggis re-wrote that and turned it into one of those somber, self-serving things I was talking about. Bigelow trusts Boal’s vision and marries her own sensibility to his, coming up with something far more genuine and fascinating.
The major point of The Hurt Locker is made clear in just a few powerful, pointed and striking visual scenes toward the end, following by a final shot I’ll not soon forget. I’ve long been a supporter of Bigelow’s, and I count her vampire film Near Dark (1987) as one of my top 100 favorites. Indeed, it helps to consider her other films, which include cop movies, sci-fi movies, the cult classic skydiving/surfing/undercover cop movie Point Break (1991), and even a submarine movie, when thinking of this one. It’s not too soon to declare The Hurt Locker a masterpiece from this gifted and underrated director. But it’s the kind of popcorn masterpiece that people might actually like to see — and I’d like to see again — rather than one that’s kept on a dusty shelf.
With: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly, Christian Camargo, Suhail Aldabbach, Christopher Sayegh, Nabil Koni, Sam Spruell, Sam Redford, Feisal Sadoun, Barrie Rice
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
MPAA Rating: R for war violence and language
Running Time: 131 minutes
Jeffrey M. Anderson is a freelance film critic based in San Francisco. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, the San Jose Metro, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Las Vegas Weekly, Cinematical.com, Greencine.com and BayInsider.com. In addition, he maintains his own movie review website, Combustible Celluloid.com. He has served as an Oscar expert on television and a horror expert at film festivals.
This Thursday at 6:00pm, Bear Republic will be on hand to pour three of their best brews from Cloverdale, CA. They’ll be giving out a ton of cool swag and offering up pint specials, plus you’ll get to keep your glass. The Beer Advocate has rated 61 of their beers and the brewery has earned the excellent grade of “A-”. That’s pretty impressive. In any case, they’ll be tapping the following…
Hop Rod Rye (ABV 8.0%) – Essentially a bold American IPA made with 20% rye malt. Darker in color, Hop Rod Rye boasts a huge hop aroma and flavor accompanied by a slightly sweet, malty finish.
Red Rocket Ale (ABV 6.8%) – The LA Times deemed this one “Beer of the Month” in April! This fiery red ale is not for the weak at heart. Red Rocket is a full bodied, hoppy brew which finishes on the palate with caramel malts.
Racer X (A.B.V. 7.8%) – This bold winter ale follows English brewing traditions, but with a California twist. Bold hops, but balanced … It’s a double IPA!
So shuffle on out this Thursday and suck down some suds, suckers!
While driving around the area prior to buying our home, we drove past Mimmo’s Pizza, a plain, run-of-the-mill lookin’ pizza place located at 240 Nutt Road. I was first struck by the seemingly awkward name of the joint. “How in the hell do you pronounce that?” I thought, “Is it Mim-o’s or does it rhyme with the name of the lost clown fish in that Pixar movie?” After we bought our home and began the moving in process, the need for prepared food quickly became mandatory and Mimmo’s was literally a stone’s throw away. I really didn’t know what to expect until I walked in and saw a very familiar face… Mimmo.
