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The Hurt Locker is a 2009 American war thriller[1] directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Shot entirely on location in Jordan, the film is based on recently declassified information about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) (bomb squad) team in present day Iraq. The Hurt Locker is written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded with a bomb squad.[2][3]

The Hurt Locker has been picked up by distributor Summit Entertainment.[4] The film is scheduled for domestic release in the U.S. on June 26th, 2009 in New York and Los Angeles, going wider in July.[5][6][7][8][9]

In Iraq, an elite U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit is forced to play a dangerous game of cat and mouse in the chaos of war in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.[10] Jeremy Renner plays the leader of the EOD team, as he contends with not only defusing bombs in the backdrop of a war, but also the psychological and emotional strain that it inflicts.[11]

Overview

The Hurt Locker stars 2009 Independent Spirit Award best acting nominees Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie, as well as Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, Brian Geraghty, and Evangeline Lilly.[12] [13][14] [15] [16]

The script was written by first-time screenwriter Mark Boal, a freelance writer who has contributed to Playboy, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone Magazines and who also wrote the short story that inspired the film In the Valley of Elah. [12] Boal spent time embedded with a real bomb squad, which was a source for the story.[17]

Other members of the key filmmaking crew include cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, film editors Chris Innis and Bob Murawski, production designer Karl Júlíusson, production sound mixer Ray Beckett, and costume designer George Little. The film's real explosions and special effects were designed by Richard Stutsman and his team. The score was composed by Academy Award nominated composer Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders.

The Hurt Locker was shot entirely on location in the Middle East, over forty-four days from July to September 2007, during the height of the Iraq war surge. Often four or more camera crews filmed simultaneously, which resulted in nearly 200 hours of footage.[18] [19]

Although the filmmakers scouted locations in Morocco, director Kathryn Bigelow sought greater authenticity and wound up shooting most of the movie in Jordan because of its close proximity to Iraq. Some of the locations were less than three miles from the Iraqi border.[18] All the Iraqi roles in the film were played by displaced Iraqi war refugees living in Jordan, many of them trained actors who had been forced to flee their country.[18]

Lead actor Jeremy Renner, who trained with real EOD teams prior to shooting the film, says that great pains were taken to ensure the film's authenticity.[20] According to Renner, shooting the film in the Middle East contributed to this. "There were two by fours with nails being dropped from two-story buildings that hit me in the helmet and they were throwing rocks... we got shot at a few times while we were filming," Renner said. "When you see it, you're gonna feel like you've been in war."[21]

According to screenwriter Boal, "It's the first movie about the Iraq war that purports to show the experience of the soldiers."[22] "We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can't see on CNN." He adds, "Most war movies don't come out until after the war is over.[22] It's really exciting for me, coming out of the world of journalism, to have a movie come out about a conflict while the conflict is still going on." [12]

Premieres

The world premiere of The Hurt Locker was at the 65th Annual Venice Film Festival, Venice, Italy, on September 4th, 2008.[23] According to VARIETY, the bomb-squad actioner "jolted Venice" with high-adrenaline, receiving a ten minute standing ovation.[24]

The film also won the SIGNIS grand prize at the Venice film festival. According to the jury’s statement, the motivation for this choice is "the filmmakers' uncompromising approach to the Iraq war and its consequences seen through the experience of the bomb technicians for whom war is an addiction rather than a cause. The film challenges the audience’s view of war in general and the current war in particular because it demonstrates the struggle between violence to the body and psychological alienation."[25] The Hurt Locker received several other awards in Venice, including the Arca Cinemagiovani Award (Arca Young Cinema Award) for "Best Film Venezia 65" (chosen by an international youth jury); the Human Rights Film Network Award; and the "La Navicella" – Venezia Cinema Award.[26]

Reviewing the film for TIME magazine at Venice, film critic Richard Corliss said, "The Hurt Locker is a near-perfect movie about men in war, men at work. Through sturdy imagery and violent action, it says that even Hell needs heroes."[27] Toronto Star critic Peter Howell said, "Just when you think the battle of Iraq war dramas has been fought and lost, along comes one that demands to be seen... If you can sit through The Hurt Locker without your heart nearly pounding through your chest, you must be made of granite."[28]

The film's North American premiere was at the 33rd annual Toronto International Film Festival, where it was listed as being among the "top 6 picks" of the festival.[29][30] Festival co-director Bailey says that The Hurt Locker "unlocked the key to making a film about the Iraq War. It transcends what is going on in the headlines... and finds something that's mysterious and symbolic."[31] Entertainment Weekly's film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum listed the film as her number one find at Toronto, adding: "Jeremy Renner gives a knockout performance... Every step he takes is truly a matter of life and death — for him as well as for the soldiers he serves with... the anxiety and tension of battle (are compressed) into every frame."[32]

The Hurt Locker is currently on a film festival world tour, having been screened out of competition at the Zurich Film Festival[33] and the 37th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal.[34] [35] It was scheduled as the opening film at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina in mid-November 2008 and at the Fifth Dubai International Film Festival on December 16th, 2008.[36] [37] [38] The film premiered at the 2008 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia, and also at the Göteborg International Film Festival in Sweden in January 2009. [1] [39] [40] [41]

The Hurt Locker was screened at the 2009 tenth annual Film Comment Selects Festival of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.[42] The 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas also included The Hurt Locker screening out-of-competition.[43] [44]

The film was a centerpiece presentation at the third annual 2009 AFI Dallas International Film Festival, where director Bigelow received an honorary Dallas Star Award.[45] [46] The Hurt Locker, which won the Human Rights Film Network Award at Venice, also screened in Bologna, Italy as part of the 2009 Bologna Human Rights Nights Film Festival which ran from March 27, 2009 through April 5th, 2009.[47]

Awards and nominations

Besides the four award wins and five nominations at the Venice Film Festival, The Hurt Locker was also nominated for International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography CAMERIMAGE PLUS Grand Prix Golden Frog award for best cinematography by Barry Ackroyd.[48] Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie were nominated for best acting categories for the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards.[16] The AFI Dallas 2009 International Film Festival has awarded the AFI DALLAS honorary Star Award to the film's director, Bigelow.[45] [46] The film's director has also received recognition from ShoWest, the annual film exhibition confab in Las Vegas.[49]

35 Comments »

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Spoken like a true wild man … The Hurt Locker

I was always under the impression that it would be another liberal
propaganda-driven message movie like all the others coming out
recently. To my great surprise, it was not. Rather than use the war to
tell people already against it to protest, Bigelow and screenwriter
Mark Boal decide to use Iraq purely as a backdrop to the real subject
matter at hand—war itself. Plain and simple, war is hell, but it is
also a drug each soldier feeds on, an adrenaline rush that makes him
wake every morning to see what may happen. We are thrown into the
action as Bravo Company's bomb team has just 38 days left in rotation.
Let's just say the day doesn't end well and the final month has its ups
and downs showing the world what is going on over there—the pressure,
the friendships, the duty, and the loss.The authenticity is astounding throughout. I know people will gripe
about the shaky camera style, but that lends itself to the realism and
puts you into the action of this bomb squad under the cowboy antics of
leader William James, played by Jeremy Renner. He is a recent addition,
replacing the team's last technician after a tragic accident involving
a bomb and an Iraqi cell phone. It would appear that he has a death
wish, going into situations without recon and letting his emotions get
the better of him every step of the way. He does have a girlfriend and
son back home, though, and the compassion a father has comes out at
times, especially when dealing with a young Middle Eastern boy named
Beckham selling DVDs and playing soccer. James uses his sense of humor
strangely, telling people he'll chop their heads off or some other such
nonsense with a straight face before smiling, saying he's just kidding,
and rubbing their head. His carefree attitude may seem cavalier, but by
the end of the film we will realize what makes him tick. He is doing
this for his country, filling a job in high demand with the US army, a
job he's damn good at.The other two members of his team don't necessarily share his laidback
demeanor. As another soldier says later on in the film, this team is
wired tight. Anthony Mackie's JT Sanborn is a by-the-books guy, holding
the safety of his men above all else. He is willing to have a good time
and can drink, punch, and joke with the best of them, but when it comes
to a live bomb out in the middle of a street, he wants you with your
radio on, listening to what he has to say. When a surrounding area has
been evacuated and he asks James to pull back, letting the engineers
take over, he wants to be listened to. Renner's technician is not that
kind of guy, though. He sees a puzzle and he wants to solve it, almost
admiring the bomb creator whose work he is dismantling. Unafraid to
give his Sergeant the finger and continue with his work, headphones and
bomb suit off—Specialist Eldridge right next to him in the blast zone
being told to fall back by Sanborn but having to stay since James is
the commanding officer—he lives for the excitement at the edge of life
and death.As for Eldridge, played by Brian Geraghty, who is used to the desert
having been in Jarhead, he is a young novice on the team, never having
seen a dead body, never having been in a firefight, and yet here he is
putting himself in the way of active bombs that could blow him to
pieces. A boy that isn't quite able to shake the fear of death, nor the
thought that being in Iraq means he already is dead, Eldridge is
visited often by a Colonel, who is also a psychiatrist of some sort,
helping him through the war. Their relationship ends with devastating
effect that resonates from Geraghty's performance despite being an
obvious result when watching the sequence leading up to the event. It
really is the performance by each of these three leads—Renner, Mackie,
and Geraghty—that makes The Hurt Locker as effective a tale as it is.
Eldridge may keep his demons on his sleeve throughout, but both James
and Sanborn keep theirs hidden until they can no longer. Both do
brilliant work at expressing the inner fears and desires, especially
those dreams they aren't sure they'll ever be able to fulfill.A lot of credit must be given to Bigelow for getting all the pieces
together and crafting a very effective war film. It is character-driven
throughout, hinging on the audience believing that these men are in
life or death situations each and every day. She opens the film through
the eyes of an Army bot, calling to memory the first person filming
in—what is my favorite film of hers—Strange Days. And while many will
label Bigelow as a man's director, doing action and
testosterone-induced work, you can't deny her delicate care in
expressing the human psyche. It isn't even just the fight scenes or the
high-pressure anticipation of a bomb going off; no my favorite moment
is when Renner goes off camp to seek revenge for something he believes
occurred. He is alone, without his uniform or equipment and only a
sidearm at his disposal, wandering the streets of Iraq. Just the matter
in which he has to return to base shows how on edge everyone is. This
isn't a video game played by faceless automatons, no, war is most
definitely hell. It's being fought, win or lose, by people just like
us, full of aspirations and dreams we just hope we'll live long enough
to see come to fruition.

babubhaut from buffalo, ny, usa - 30 June 2009

The "SAW" of war movies

Please bear with me, when I say that this is the "SAW" of the anti war
movie genre. It doesn't mean that "The Hurt Locker" has a lot of
explicit violence (only some), but that it constantly attacks your
nerves. There is almost no moment of peace in the entire two hour
movie. Accordingly you leave the theatre exhausted or you just snap out
of the story halfway through because it is just too much. At the
showing that I just came home from a guy in the front row fell asleep
and started snoring so loudly, the whole theatre could hear him. Two
guys next to me left the cinema saying that they found the movie
boring. I don't think it is boring. It's just relentless, never
allowing the story to calm down now and then.Mark Boal, the screenwriter, is a journalist who supposedly took a
pretty neutral stance in his articles about the Iraq war. (This
information was given to the audience by the guy who introduced the
movie). Now, I find that a bit surprising, because "The Hurt Locker"
isn't really that neutral in its outlook. Sure, it probably strives to
be a realistic depiction of the constant physical and emotional
pressure of being in the U.S. Army's bomb squad, but we only ever see
the American side of things. The American soldiers, all of whom are the
best of people with the best intentions - the lead character fulfilling
the old John Wayne-cliché again (and having him "break down" once or
twice doesn't change a thing about that). Whenever an Iraqi shows up,
he's a terrorist or at least a threat. I am aware that this, too, is a
reality for an American soldier, but STILL… for a depiction of
reality, this movie relies too much on theatrical moments, some
out-of-place one liners and clichés. Still, "The Hurt Locker" is properly unsettling. It makes you feel the
constant paranoia of being in the war zone. The cast is good
(especially Jeremy Renner in the lead) and so is the score. Whereas the
pictures and the pacing are "in your face" (quite literally actually,
we mostly see the characters in extreme close-up, which adds to the
tense atmosphere), the score is almost play-like. That makes for a nice
contrast. If the action on screen is about the here and now, the
apocalyptic score transmutes certain moments into scenes that show the
eternal madness of man killing his own.Those are the moments when "The Hurt Locker" works best. However, it
hurts the movie that we're only shown the American side of things. We
only see the American soldiers who try their best, but are broken by
the war. That may be one aspect of this horrible situation, but it's
either blue-eyed or ignorant to make this the only point of your film.

Superunknovvn from Austria, Vienna - 29 June 2009

Great characters make this movie a masterpiece!

The Action-sequences in this movie are, although better than average,
not what makes this movie worth watching. It is the characters, the
emotions and the relationships.The Opening Words, War is a Drug, are not just to sound cool, they
reappear as the main message over and over again in the movie, although
they are never spoken out. Drugs make you addicted, Drugs confuse you,
Drugs make you do dangerous, stupid things. These characteristics can
all be seen in the movie.Very interesting are as well the guest roles of Guy Pierce, David Morse
and Ralph Fiennes, all showing a different types of soldiers in the
war. The shallow type, to whom the war appears to be fun. The cowboy,
who fights for glory and is as well impressed by great actions. And
finally, the nefarious Bounty hunter who is only seeking profit in the
war. All these characters build a contrast to the protagonist, showing
what he is not.A film that has it's message hidden, yet clear and strong can only be
called one thing, a masterpiece.(little cheesy, I know. But I really loved this movie)

mr_shya from Germany - 29 June 2009

The Brilliant Explosion Of Kathryn Bigelow

I spent the entire film grabbing the arms of my seat. I was there in
Irak, steps away from my death and the death of those around me. The
tension, the suspense is at times breathtaking, literally. "The Hurt
Locker" is a miracle and the definitive consecration of a great
filmmaker, Kathryn Bigelow. This is also a rare occasion in which I
went to see the film without having read a single review or knowing
anything about it. One should try to do that more often because the
impact of the surprise translates into pure pleasure and in this case,
sometimes, you have to look away from the unmitigated horror. Jeremy
Renner is a real find. He is superb. A kind soul, wild man with enough
arrogance to make him appear reckless and yet his humanity precedes
him. People may commit the mistake of avoiding this gem thinking that
it's just a war film. Don't. It isn't. It's a great, engrossing film
about human emotions, not to be missed.

carlostallman from Argentina - 28 June 2009

A Perfectly Shattering Film Going Experience

Kathryn Bigelow concocts a masterpiece of a film without tricks or
gimmicks, at least none to be detected and that in itself is a triumph.
Realistic yet poetic like the works of the great masters. It enters and
fits a genre and at the same time is unique, unexpected. It shutters,
moves and alters every sense, like a powerful drug. I saw it last night
and I'm going to see it again tonight. Last night Jeremy Remmer came to
speak to the audience in a face to face moderated by Sam Rockwell,
great idea but it change my perception of Remmer in the film, of his
character. Although he praised Kathryn Bigelow, he said things like "I
don't tell her how to direct and she doesn't tell me how to act"
Watching the film I felt that childish arrogance belonged to the
character by his personal appearance showed it belonged to the actor.
In any case, it works on the screen. A character you warm up to almost
immediately in spite of his contradictions. Remmer will remind you at
times of Robert Redford and others of Michael J Pollard. He is truly
terrific so try to avoid his personal appearances not to contaminate
that impression. The rest of the cast works wonders and the brief
cameos by Guy Pearce and Ralph Finnes are the most organic and
unobtrusive cameos I've ever seen in my life. All in all extraordinary.
I predict, even if we're only in June, that Kathryn Bigelow risks to be
the first female director to win the Academy Award. She certainly got
my vote.

agmancuso from United States - 28 June 2009

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