The Hurt Locker’s immersion aims to replicate war chaos and minimize narrative.

Evidence

The film opens with a point-of-view shot—an angle used constantly throughout, dynamically in tandem with sequences shot with four cameras simultaneously, without the actors’ knowledge of which was primary, and the resulting editing feat wildly vacillates between extreme close-ups and establishing shots on location in Jordan, with integrated sequences presented in varying apertures, changing the look from frame to frame. Aesthetically this work aimed “to replicate the feel of war, the chaos of war, the messiness of war”; the documentary aesthetic includes an episodic structure that minimizes narrative. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 219