The Hurt Locker is an American war film
directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The film follows a United States Army bomb squad in
Iraq during the Iraq War in 2004. The story was written by Mark Boal, a
freelance writer who was embedded with a bomb squad, and the film was shot in
Jordan.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2008 and screened at multiple
other film festivals in 2008 and 2009. Its sole public release in 2008 was in
Italy in October, and it later had a limited release in the United States on
June 26, 2009 in New York and Los Angeles. Based on the success of its limited
run, the independent film received a more widespread theatrical release on July
24, 2009.
Plot
During the early months of the post-invasion
period in Iraq, Sergeant First Class William James becomes the new team leader
of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit with the U.S. Army's Bravo Company,
replacing Staff Sergeant Thompson, who was killed by a remote-detonated
improvised explosive device (IED) in Baghdad. He joins Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and
Specialist Owen Eldridge, whose jobs are to communicate with their team leader
via radio inside his bombsuit, and provide him with rifle cover while he
examines an IED. James's insistence on approaching a suspected IED without first
sending in a bomb disposal robot during their first mission together lead
Sanborn and Eldridge to consider him "reckless". Back at Camp Victory, James
befriends Beckham, a young Iraqi boy who works for a local merchant operating at
the base. The team is next called out to the United Nations building in Baghdad,
where a parked car has a large bomb in the trunk. While James intensively
studies the intricate bomb, Sanborn and Eldridge provide him with cover. Sanborn
becomes increasingly concerned about three men watching them from a minaret and
another filming them from a nearby rooftop. With the building evacuated, he
suggests to James that the they pull out and let a team of engineers come disarm
the bomb. James ignores and angers Sanborn by removing his radio headset, and
remains with the car until he disarms the device.
While returning from detonating bombs in the desert, the EOD team encounter a
British private military company. They soon come under enemy attack, and three
of the British mercenaries are killed in the ensuing firefight, which ends after
Sanborn and James shoot the last of the insurgent snipers. For their next
mission, the team heads to a warehouse to retrieve unexploded ordnance. While
securing the warehouse, James discovers the dead body of a young boy who has
been surgically implanted with an unexploded bomb. James is sure that it is
Beckham, while Sanborn and Eldridge are not entirely certain. That night, James
forces the merchant for whom Beckham worked to drive him to Beckham's house.
Upon entering the house to which he is brought, James encounters an Iraqi
professor and demands to know who was responsible for turning Beckham into a
"body bomb". The professor thinks James is a CIA agent and calmly invites him to
sit down as a guest of his household. A confused James is then forced out of the
house by the man's wife, and sneaks back into Camp Victory with the help of a
sympathetic guard. That same night, Eldridge is accidentally shot in the leg
during a mission in which the EOD team successfully tracks down and kills two
bomb makers. The next morning, James is approached by Beckham, who is alive and
well. Much to Beckham's confusion, he is completely ignored by James. Eldridge
blames James for his injury, claiming James unnecessarily put his life at risk
just so that he could have an "adrenaline fix", referring to Sanborn's
suggestion that the mission, which James had ordered, would be better suited for
an infantry platoon.
With only two days left on their current tour, James and Sanborn are called in
to assist in a situation where a man was forced to wander into a military
checkpoint with a time-bomb strapped to his chest. James cannot remove the bomb
nor disarm it in time, and is forced to flee before the bomb goes off. On the
ride back to the base, Sanborn becomes emotional and confesses to James that he
can no longer cope with the pressure of being in EOD, and relishes the prospect
of finally leaving Iraq and starting a family. James is next seen back at home
with his wife and child, visibly bored with civilian life. One night he has an
internal monologue in the form of speaking aloud to his infant son, where he
says that there is only "one thing" that he knows he loves. He is next seen back
in Iraq, ready to serve another year as part of an EOD team with Delta Company.
Cast
- Jeremy Renner - Sergeant First Class
William James
- Anthony Mackie - Sergeant J.T.
Sanborn
- Brian Geraghty - Specialist Owen
Eldridge
- Guy Pearce - Staff Sergeant Matt
Thompson
- Ralph Fiennes - Contractor Team
Leader
- David Morse - Colonel Reed
- Christian Camargo - Colonel Cambridge
- Evangeline Lilly - Connie James
- Christopher Sayegh - Beckham Production
Production
Kathryn Bigelow directed the film based on a
screenplay by Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who was embedded with an
American bomb squad in the war in Iraq. Boal combined his experiences into a
fictional retelling of real events. He said of the film's goal, "The idea is
that it's the first movie about the Iraq War that purports to show the
experience of the soldiers. We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers
go through that you can't see on CNN, and I don't mean that in a
censorship-conspiracy way. I just mean the news doesn't actually put
photographers in with units that are this elite." With Jeremy Renner, Anthony
Mackie, and Brian Geraghty cast in the main roles, filming began in July 2007 in
Jordan and Kuwait.
The
Hurt Locker was shot mainly on location in the Middle East, over 44 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. Although the filmmakers scouted for locations in Morocco, director
Kathryn Bigelow sought greater authenticity and decided to film in Jordan
because of its proximity to Iraq. Some of the locations were less than three
miles from the Iraqi border. 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. They included roles by Suhail Aldabbach,
Nabil Koni, Feisal Sadoun, Imad Dadudi, Hasan Darwish, Wasfi Amour, Nibras
Quassem, Nader Tarawneh and very notably Christopher Sayegh in the role of
"Beckham", the Iraqi street vendor kid who befriends Sergeant First Class
William James played by Jeremy Renner.
Lead actor Jeremy Renner, who trained with real EOD teams before shooting the
film, says that great pains were taken to ensure the film's authenticity.
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."
"You can't fake that amount of heat," Anthony Mackie who plays Sgt. Sanborn
says, adding, "When you are on set and all of the extras are Iraqi refugees, it
really informs the movie that you're making. When you start hearing the stories
from a true perspective ... of people who were actually there, it gives you a
clear viewpoint of where you are as an artist and the story you would like to
tell. It was a great experience to be there."
Cinematography
For the film, Bigelow sought to immerse audiences "into something that was raw,
immediate and visceral". The director was impressed with cinematographer Barry
Ackroyd's work on
United 93 and The Wind That Shakes the Barley and invited him to
perform the camera work for The Hurt Locker. While the film was
independently produced and filmed on a low budget, Bigelow used multiple cameras
to capture multiple perspectives, saying, "That's how we experience reality, by
looking at the microcosm and the macrocosm simultaneously. The eye sees
differently than the lens, but with multiple focal lengths and a muscular
editorial style, the lens can give you that microcosm/macrocosm perspective, and
that contributes to the feeling of total immersion."
Release
Festival screenings
The Hurt Locker had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on
September 4, 2008, and the film received a 10-minute standing ovation at the
end of its screening. At the festival, the film won the SIGNIS award, 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. The film also screened at the
33rd Annual Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, where it
generated "keen interest", though distributors were reluctant to buy it since
previous films about the Iraq War performed poorly at the box office. Summit
Entertainment purchased the film for distribution in the United States in what
was perceived as "a skittish climate for pic sales", reportedly paying $1.2
million for the rights.
In the rest of 2008, The Hurt Locker screened at the 3rd Zurich Film
Festival, the 37th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, the 21st Mar del Plata Film
Festival, the 5th Dubai International Film Festival, and the 12th Tallinn
Black Nights Film Festival. In 2009, The Hurt Locker screened at the
Göteborg International Film Festival, the 10th Film Comment Selects festival,
and the South by Southwest Film Festival. It had a centerpiece screening at
the 3rd AFI Dallas International Film Festival, where director Kathryn Bigelow
received the Dallas Star Award. Other 2009 festivals included the Human Rights
Nights International Film Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival,
and the Philadelphia Film Festival.
Theatrical run
The Hurt Locker was first publicly released in Italy by Warner Bros. Pictures
on October 10, 2008. Its next public release was in the United States, where
it had a limited release at four theaters in Los Angeles and New York City on
June 26, 2009. Over the weekend, it grossed $145,352, averaging $36,338 per
theater. In the following weekend of July 3, the film grossed $131,202 at nine
theaters, averaging $14,578 per theater, It held the highest
per-screen-average of any movie playing theatrically in the U.S. for the first
two weeks of its release, gradually moving into the top 20 chart with much
wider-released, bigger budget studio films. It has hovered around number 13 or
number 14 on box office charts for an additional four weeks. Based on that
success, distributor Summit Entertainment went wider to more than 500 screens
on July 24, 2009. As of August 28, 2009, the independently produced and
financed film has grossed a total of $11,879,626 in the U.S., Italy and
Iceland. It has not yet been released in other countries or territories.
According to the Los Angeles Times, The Hurt Locker has performed
better than most recent dramas about Middle East conflict. The independent
film was acquired by Summit Entertainment at last year's Toronto International
Film Festival for $1.5 million and has since made almost twelve million.
According to the Times, The Hurt Locker has already outperformed 2007's
In the Valley of Elah (which had $6.8 million domestic theatrical
gross), has surpassed 2008's
Stop-Loss ($10.9 million) and even could surpass 2007's
Lions for Lambs ($15 million), which starred A-listers Tom Cruise,
Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.
Critical reception
The Hurt Locker has received widespread acclaim from critics. Rotten
Tomatoes reported that 98% of critics gave the film a positive review, based
on a sample of 130, with an average score of 8.4 out of 10. At Metacritic,
which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream
critics, the film has received an average score of 94 based on 33 reviews.
Rotten Tomatoes wrote of the critics' consensus, "A well-acted, intensely
shot, action filled war epic, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is thus
far the best of the recent dramatizations of the Iraq War."
Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times gave the film four stars out of
four, writing, "The Hurt Locker is a great film, an intelligent film, a
film shot clearly so that we know exactly who everybody is and where they are
and what they're doing and why." He applauded how Bigelow built suspense with
her camera work, creating a "spellbinding" film. Ebert called Renner "a
leading contender for Academy Awards", writing, "His performance is not built
on complex speeches but on a visceral projection of who this man is and what
he feels. He is not a hero in a conventional sense." Richard Corliss of Time
magazine also spoke highly of Renner's performance, calling it a highlight of
the film. Corliss wrote, "He's ordinary, pudgy-faced, quiet, and at first
seems to lack the screen charisma to carry a film. That supposition vanishes
in a few minutes, as Renner slowly reveals the strength, confidence and
unpredictability of a young Russell Crowe. The merging of actor and character
is one of the big things to love about this movie... It's a creepy marvel to
watch James in action. He has the cool aplomb, analytical acumen and attention
to detail of a great athlete, or a master psychopath, maybe both." The critic
also embraced another highlight, the film's "steely calm" tone, reflective of
its main character. Corliss summarized, "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."
A. O. Scott of The New York Times called The Hurt Locker the best
American feature film yet made about the war in Iraq: "The movie is a
viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise,
full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the
condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or
mindless noise." Scott noticed that the film reserved criticism of the war but
wrote of how the director handled the film's limits, "Ms. Bigelow, practicing
a kind of hyperbolic realism, distills the psychological essence and moral
complications of modern warfare into a series of brilliant, agonizing set
pieces." The critic also applauded the convergence of the characters in the
film, "[It] focuses on three men whose contrasting temperaments knit this
episodic exploration of peril and bravery into a coherent and satisfying
story." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the performances of
Renner, Mackie, and Geraghty would raise their profiles considerably and said
their characters reveal their "unlooked-for aspects", such as Renner's
character being playful with an Iraqi boy. Turan applauded Boal's "lean and
compelling" script and reviewed Bigelow's direction, "Bigelow and her team
bring an awesome ferocity to re-creating the unhinged mania of bomb removal in
an alien, culturally unfathomable atmosphere." Guy Westwell of Sight & Sound
wrote that cinematographer Barry Ackroyd provided "sharp handheld coverage"
and that Paul N.J. Ottosson's sound design "uses the barely perceptible
ringing of tinnitus to amp up the tension". Westwell praised the production
value, reviewing, "The careful mapping of the subtle differences between each
bomb, the play with point of view... and the attenuation of key action
sequences... lends the film a distinctive quality that can only be attributed
to Bigelow's clever, confident direction." The critic noted its different take
on the Iraq War, "It confronts the act that men often take great pleasure in
war." He concluded, "This unapologetic celebration of a testosterone-fuelled
lust for war may gall. Yet there is something original and distinctive about
the film's willingness to admit that for some men (and many moviegoers) war
carries an intrinsic dramatic charge."
Derek Elley of Variety found The Hurt Locker to be "gripping" as a
thriller but felt that the film was weakened by "its fuzzy (and hardly
original) psychology". Elley wrote that it was unclear to know where the drama
lay: "It's emphatically not a 'cut the red wire!' countdown thriller -- these
guys get by on old-fashioned guts and instinct rather than sissy hardware --
but it's not a pure men-under-stress drama either." The critic thought
Renner's performance was "fine" and that Mackie and Geraghty were "just OK",
saying that the script showed "signs of artificially straining for character
depth".
Awards and honors
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. Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie were
nominated for best acting categories for the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards.
The AFI Dallas 2009 International Film Festival has awarded the AFI DALLAS
honorary Star Award to the film's director, Bigelow. The film's director has
also received recognition from ShoWest, the annual film exhibition confab in
Las Vegas. At the 14th Annual Nantucket International Film Festival in
Massachusetts, the Showtime Tony Cox Award for Screenwriting was awarded to
The Hurt Locker screenwriter, Mark Boal.
This article uses material from the Wikipedia
article "The Hurt Locker" and is licensed under the
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