Manohla Dargis offers up one of the best critical arguments for The Hurt Locker yet:

The Oscars – ‘Hurt Locker’ Offers the Work of War at a Fever Pitch – NYTimes.com.

Her critical assessment is top notch – far better than my own breakdown of the film.

Put another way, like Peckinpah, Ms. Bigelow is brilliant at both delivering and dissecting male violence, which is why “The Hurt Locker” is at once so pleasurable and disturbing.

I suppose my own, more coarse assessment that Ms. Bigelow has a very large member and she’s unafraid to use it gets the similar point across, but with far less eloquence. After a second viewing, I left The Hurt Locker in awe of its lean and muscular construction. Working on a relative shoestring on the edge of a war zone, I didn’t see another movie this year that worked more effectively. Even the false notes and missteps in The Hurt Locker are built with an intensity and a precision that few other films of 2009 can match.