BUILT TO BLAST; Actor Jeremy Renner shows his mettle in gritty war film.

The name Jeremy Renner may not mean very much now but all that's going to change with this grim and gritty Iraq War movie.

With his naturalistic, gimmick-free portrayal of Sergeant William James, an expert in the business of disarming bombs, Renner is a towering presence.

Without him, The Hurt Locker would still be a good movie but with him at the centre of most of the action it comes pretty damn near to being a great one.

The soldier he so convincingly portrays is the technical team leader of Bravo Company's bomb disposal unit in Baghdad.

He teams up with Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) as they go through the last 39 days of their tour of duty.

The performances from Mackie and Geraghty are first rate but it is Renner who catches your eye as an adrenalin junkie, who thrives on the life-on-theedge nature of his job. He is a soldier who is uncomfortable in his own home and is lost for words on the rare occasions when he phones his wife.

In contrast James seems never happier than when encased in his armoured outfit, pacing towards a bomb that needs his magic touch to be defused.

After a tension-packed sequence as he searches a car and eventually finds and eliminates the fuse, James smiles and says: "That was good!" There is no shortage of work for his particular brand of excellence. During the course of The Hurt Locker, Sergeant James also deals with the mayhem and horror after an oil tanker is blown up, a suicide bomber and most grisly of all, explosives hidden inside a bloody corpse.

A gung-ho officer - played by David Morse - is so impressed by the Sergeant's tally of neutralising 873 bombs that he asks for the best way to defuse an explosive. "The way you don't die, sir" is the sergeant's matter-of-fact response.

The major strength of The Hurt Locker is that it all feels so real that you can almost taste the sand on your lips.

There is a perfect example of how this sense of realism and an ace central performance combine in the sequence when Sergeant James and the other members of Bravo Company's unit bump into mercenaries, led by Ralph Fiennes, in the desert.

After they are pinned down by enemy sniper fire, James takes on the role of spotter, relaying information about the hidden targets to Sanborn. He lies in the desert, ignoring the flies darting into his mouth and eyes, staying focused on targeting the insurgents.

When Sanborn's gun jams, because the ammo is sticky with a dead mercenary's blood, James's solution is simple - spit on it and rub it clean.

This is a down and dirty look at men who risk their lives every moment they're on duty. And it almost stays true to its nitty- gritty philosophy. Almost... [bar]During a booze, bonding and fighting scene at barracks the other guys in the bomb disposal unit discover James keeps a box of mementoes which include fuses he has disarmed.

As he explains it's full of things that almost killed him, he jokingly pulls his wedding ring from the box.

It's a moment that is so artificial that it doesn't belong in this movie. Thankfully it's also a rare slip from director Kathryn Bigelow.

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EXPLOSIVE... Sgts Sanborn and James, above and left in war epic