The deafening silence that answered movies like Stop Loss, In the Valley of Elah, and Redacted seem to show that whatever people think of the Iraq War, they're not particularly interested in seeing it on screen. Is it too soon to watch fictional stories about a war that's still going on, or were they just the wrong movies?

Director Kathryn Bigelow, best known for directing Point Break and the outlaw vampire Western Near Dark, is hoping to break the jinx. And the word from sneak screenings and festivals around the world is that the great Iraq War movie may finally be here.

The Hurt Locker follows an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Baghdad, the soldiers who defuse hundreds of makeshift bombs and IEDs. When a new sergeant takes over the unit and puts them in even riskier situations, the presence of danger and risk of death take a toll on the men, and the audience along with them: The film is paced so the tension never lets up. The unit goes from bomb to bomb without a break, keeping the anxiety high and the threats ever-present and real.

Three relative unknowns play the main roles, with Jeremy Renner (28 Weeks Later) as Staff Sergeant James and Anthony Mackie (Notorious) and Brian Geraghty (We Are Marshall) as his subordinates. They're backed up by bigger-name actors like Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, and Evangeline Lilly, but the new actors have been stealing the show, with both Renner and Mackie nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards.

There's plenty of talent behind the camera too, with the effects team from Transformers, the editors from Spider-Man, and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, famed for his hand-held work in movies like United 93. And first-time screenwriter Mark Boal was a journalist embedded with a real EOD unit (he also wrote the short story that In the Valley of Elah was adapted from).

Unlike those other Iraq movies, the ones that no one wanted to see, this one steers clear of politics and instead tries to put the viewer on the ground, experiencing, at least in a filtered and mercifully short-term way, what the troops see and its impact on their psyches. And while that might affect how you think about the war, it doesn't preach, and that may be end up being the recipe for success. The Hurt Locker aims to give a completely different look at the war we're still waging, one that focuses on the action and fear and adrenaline of the soldiers on the streets of Baghdad without delving into why they're there and when they should leave -- which, after all, are things they don't really have the luxury of worrying about.

The Hurt Locker opens wide in July.

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