The Hurt Locker (15)

Sweeping the board at the Oscars and the BAFTAs and creating history: the first time ever a woman has won the Academy Award for Best Director

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce
USA, 2009, 2 hours 11 minutes

Sun 14 March 6.30pm The Courtyard Hereford

Life is tough enough for bomb-disposal experts plying their knife-edge trade in the inferno of the Iraq war. But when their commander is obliterated they are landed with Staff Sergeant William James, whose recklessness in action borders on the insane. From the steel-wire tension of the opening sequence onwards, where a 'regular' mission inexorably slips into horrific mishap, there's not a second's let-up. A bruising, brilliant experience that is especially good on the disorientation and flat-out weirdness of it all, this is a spare, unyielding master-class in the racking-up of tension to the point that thrill distorts into exquisite agony.