alpha male, staff sergeant william james (renner) is anything but tame. nicknamed the "wild one" he acts on destructive impulses and has a reckless abandon for protocol. dropping head sets, smoking cigarettes, and entering baghdad solo are the norm for this expert bomb-diffuser. dramatized or not, james' ego encapsulates a personality that gets off from being immersed in the chaos and horror of war. the tension of facing death every day (the episodic structure exposing the hauntingly routineness of it) gives james a natural adrenaline rush that makes him feel his most alive. under his bed he keeps deactivated detonators for trophies: he mentions how fascinating they are as instruments of death that could have killed him. underneath this though, they serve as a faint reminder of james' last fix. he is a man addicted to this rush. as bigelow's opening quote suggests, war is a drug.
unlike his partner who he accidentally sent to the hurt locker, james finds no comfort and zero ambition returning back home. the mundane experience of grocery shopping just doesn't compare to the kinetic urgency of bomb-diffusing. serving his country, and more precisely serving his own dependent need, james chooses to go back and fight in iraq. however "personal" this choice is, it represents a larger idea; that there are pleasurable impulses in warring. one reason america repeatedly engages in war is because it releases a natural high. its soaked into the genetics of history. in the scene after james shoots his partner, he enters a washroom alone and starts a shower to relieve his stress. as the water pours down his still military-suited body it rinses into a pool of blood. james is surrounded by a cold truth: death and injury of innocents are the cost of a body that, at its most nakedness, is always at war.
