The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kathryn Bigelow
Written by	Mark Boal
Produced by	Kathryn Bigelow Mark Boal Nicolas Chartier Greg Shapiro
Starring	Jeremy Renner Anthony Mackie Brian Geraghty Evangeline Lilly with Ralph Fiennes David Morse and Guy Pearce
Cinematography	Barry Ackroyd
Edited by	Chris Innis Bob Murawski
Music by	Marco Beltrami Buck Sanders
Distributed by	Summit Entertainment
Release dates	September 4, 2008 (2008-09-04) (Venice Film Festival) June 26, 2009 (2009-06-26) United States
Running time	131 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$11 million
Box office	$16,107,592

The Hurt Locker is a 2009 American war thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow. It is one of the most acclaimed films of 2009, earning awards and honors from numerous organizations, festivals and groups, including nine Academy Award nominations. The film follows a United States Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team during the Iraq War.

The story was written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded with a bomb squad. It stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty as members of a U.S. Army EOD unit in Iraq and follows their tour together as they contend with defusing bombs, the threat of insurgency, and the tension that develops among them.

The film was shot in the Middle East, specifically in Jordan, within miles of the Iraq border. It was first released theatrically in Italy in 2008. It was then released 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 in the United States on July 24, 2009. The film had initially premiered at the Venice Film Festival in late 2008, then at the Toronto International Film Festival in North America, where it was picked up for distribution in the United States by Summit Entertainment.

The title is slang for being injured in an explosion, as in 'they sent him to the hurt locker'.

Plot

The Hurt Locker opens with a quote from War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a best-selling 2002 book by New York Times war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges: "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

During the early stages of the post-invasion period in Iraq in 2004, Staff Sergeant William James becomes the 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 IEDs. During their first mission together, James's insistence on approaching a suspected IED without first sending in a bomb disposal robot leads Sanborn and Eldridge to consider him reckless. At Camp Victory, James befriends a local boy who calls himself "Beckham" (after football star David Beckham) who works for a local merchant operating at the base selling bootlegged DVDs. Subsequent missions see James disarming a bomb at the United Nations building in Baghdad, the team joining forces with a British PMC team in a firefight with insurgent snipers, and the team retrieving unexploded ordnance from a warehouse, all while tensions mount between the team members due to James's recklessness and unorthodox methods. During the latter mission, James discovers the dead body of a young boy who has been surgically implanted with an unexploded bomb. James believes it to be Beckham, while Sanborn and Eldridge are not certain.

James, dressed in civilian clothing, accosts the merchant for whom Beckham worked, and orders the merchant to drive him to Beckham's house. Upon entering the house, James encounters an Iraqi professor and demands to know who was responsible for turning Beckham into a "body bomb". The professor gives no sign of understanding this request, but thinks James is a CIA agent and calmly invites him to sit down as a guest of his household. A confused James is forced out of the house by the man's wife, and he gets back into Camp Victory with the help of a sympathetic guard. That night, Eldridge is accidentally shot in the leg while the EOD team tracks down and kills two insurgents. The next morning, James is approached by Beckham, whom James walks by without saying a word. Eldridge blames James for his injury, claiming James unnecessarily put his life at risk so 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 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 can neither 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 returns home to his wife and child, and is seen quietly performing routine tasks of civilian life. One night he speaks to his infant son, telling him that there is only "one thing" that he knows he loves. He is next seen back in Iraq promoted to Sergeant First Class, ready to serve another year as part of an EOD team with Delta Company.

Cast

• Jeremy Renner as Sergeant First Class William James
• Anthony Mackie as Sergeant JT Sanborn
• Brian Geraghty as Specialist Owen Eldridge
• Christian Camargo as Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge
• Guy Pearce as Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson
• Ralph Fiennes as PMC Team Leader
• David Morse as Colonel Reed
• Evangeline Lilly as Connie James
• Christopher Sayegh as Beckham

Production

Writing

The Hurt Locker is based on accounts of Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who was embedded with an American bomb squad in the war in Iraq. Director Kathryn Bigelow was familiar with Boal's work before his experiences, having turned one of his Playboy articles into the short-lived television series The Inside. When Boal was embedded with the squad, he went with the members 10 to 15 times a day to watch their tasks, keeping in touch with Bigelow about his experiences. 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."

Casting

The film's three main stars are Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty. Renner plays Sergeant First Class William James, a composite character with qualities based on individuals that screenwriter Mark Boal knew when embedded with the bomb squad. Mackie plays Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and describes his experience filming in Jordan in the summer, "It was so desperately hot, and we were so easily agitated. But that movie was like doing a play. We really looked out for each other, and it was a great experience. It made me believe in film." Geraghty played Specialist Owen Eldrige. Secondary roles include Christopher Sayegh as Beckham, Christian Camargo as Colonel Cambridge, Guy Pearce as Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson, Ralph Fiennes as a contractor team leader, David Morse as Colonel Reed, and Evangeline Lilly as Connie James. Bigelow discovered several hundred thousand refugees of Iraq when filming in Amman. She cast refugees who had theatrical backgrounds, such as Suhail Aldabbach, who plays a forced suicide bomber at the film's end. Other tertiary roles include Nabil Koni, Fesal Sadoun, Imad Dadudi, Hasan Darwish, Wasfi Amour, Nibras Quassem, and Nader Tarawneh.

Filming

Members of the key filmmaking crew include producer Tony Mark, director of photography 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. Filming began in July 2007 in Amman, Jordan.

According to producer Tony Mark, the blood, sweat and heat captured on-camera in the production was mirrored behind the scenes. "It's a tough, tough movie about a tough, tough subject," Mark said in an interview, "There was a palpable tension throughout on the set. It was just like the onscreen story of three guys who fight with each other, but when the time comes to do the work, they come together to get the job done."

Filming began in July 2007 in Jordan and Kuwait. Producer Greg Shapiro spoke about security concerns of filming in Jordan, "It was interesting telling people we were going to make the movie in Jordan because the first question everybody asked was about the security situation here." 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.

Producer Tony Mark recalled armorer David Fencl finishing a 12-hour day and staying up all night to create proper ammunition for a sniper rifle when the real ammo didn't clear Jordanian customs in time for the scheduled shoot.

On this film shoot, there were few of the normal Hollywood perks; nobody on the set got an air-conditioned trailer or a private bathroom. 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," Mackie 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 S16mm 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."

Critical reception

The New York Times called The Hurt Locker "the year’s most critically acclaimed American film". Rotten Tomatoes reported that 97% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on a sample of 182, with an average score of 8.4 out of 10, and it was the second highest-rated film in 2009 at the site, behind Pixar's Up with 98%. At Metacritic, which assigns a rating normalized to 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 reviewed of the recent dramatizations of the Iraq War."

Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times rated the film as the best film of the year and as one of the best of the decade, 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 the suspense was built, calling the film "spellbinding". Ebert considered 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." Corliss also praised 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: "You may emerge from “The Hurt Locker” shaken, exhilarated and drained, but you will also be thinking... 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." He 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, "[I]t confronts the fact 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." Amy Taubin of Film Comment described The Hurt Locker as "a structuralist war movie" and "a totally immersive, off-the-charts high-anxiety experience from beginning to end". Taubin praised Ackroyd's "brilliant" cinematography with multiple viewpoints and also said of the film's editing, "Bob Murawski and Chris Innis's editing is similarly quick and nervous; the rapid changes in POV as they cut from one camera's coverage to another's makes you feel as if you, like the characters, are under threat from all sides."

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal called it, "A first-rate action thriller, a vivid evocation of urban warfare in Iraq, a penetrating study of heroism and a showcase for austere technique, terse writing and a trio of brilliant performances." 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." Entertainment Weekly's film critic Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film the rare "A" rating, calling it, "an intense, action-driven war pic, a muscular, efficient standout that simultaneously conveys the feeling of combat from within as well as what it looks like on the ground. This ain't no war videogame."

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: "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 also felt that the script showed, "signs of artificially straining for character depth." Anne Thompson, also writing for Variety, believed The Hurt Locker to be a contender for Best Picture, particularly based on the unique subject matter pursued by a female director and on being an exception to other films about the Iraq War that had performed poorly.

Tara McKelvey from The American Prospect believes that the film is pro-U.S. Army propaganda, although it sets itself up as anti-war when its message in the beginning is "War is a drug". She continues, "you feel empathy for the soldiers when they shoot. And in this way, the full impact of the Iraq war -- at least as it was fought in 2004 -- becomes clear: American soldiers shot at Iraqi civilians even when, for example, they just happened to be holding a cell phone and standing near an IED". She concludes, "For all the graphic violence, bloody explosions and, literally, human butchery that is shown in the film, The Hurt Locker is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles for the U.S. Army that I have seen."

Response among veterans

While most traditional media reviews of The Hurt Locker were positive, the movie was heavily criticized by Iraq veterans—and embedded reporters—for its lack of realism.

Writing for The Huffington Post, Iraq veteran Kate Hoit told readers "The Hurt Locker is in many ways inaccurate, and the inaccuracies have alienated most service members from enjoying this movie." Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America concurred, calling Hoit's assessment "a very fair review." Rieckhoff went on to say, "The Hurt Locker got nine more Oscar nominations than it deserves. I don't know why critics love this silly, inaccurate film so much."

Author Brandon Friedman, also a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, shared a similar view at VetVoice: "The Hurt Locker is a high-tension, well-made, action movie that will certainly keep most viewers on the edges of their seats. But if you know anything about the Army, or about operations or life in Iraq, you'll be so distracted by the nonsensical sequences and plot twists that it will ruin the movie for you. It certainly did for me. To say that the scenes in this movie were 'tactically unrealistic' wouldn't even begin to describe it."

Similarly, at the blog Army of Dude, infantryman and Iraq veteran Alex Horton noted that "the way the team goes about their missions is completely absurd." Echoing that, Matt Gallagher, Iraq veteran and author of the forthcoming book, Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War, wrote about The Hurt Locker: "Enjoy it, but don’t think it's realistic."

Troy Steward, another combat veteran, wrote on the blog Bouhammer that "just about everything" in the movie "wasn’t realistic." He continued: "Some say 'who cares, it is only a movie,' but I can’t look at it that way. I had 78 of my soldiers in Iraq in 2004 of which only 77 came back. I consider this movie a complete sign of disrespect to them and all of the other soldiers that have not only served in Iraq but especially those that have served in the EOD. If anyone who has never served in the Global War on Terror thinks this movie represents what it is like, then you they are completely and utterly wrong. They could not be further from the truth."

On the embedded side, former correspondent for The Politico and Military Times Christian Lowe (who embedded with U.S. military units each year from 2002 to 2005) explained at DefenseTech: "Some of the scenes are so disconnected with reality to be almost parody."

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 "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. It was released in the United States on June 26, 2009, with a limited release at four theaters in Los Angeles and New York City. Over its first weekend, it grossed $145,352, averaging $36,338 per theater. The following weekend, beginning 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 United States for the first two weeks of its release, gradually moving into the top 20 chart with much wider-released, bigger budget studio films. It held 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 October 3, 2009, the independently produced and financed film has grossed a total of more than $16 million worldwide.

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 11 times that amount. The film has already outperformed all other Iraq-war themed films such as In the Valley of Elah (2007), Stop-Loss (2008) and Afghanistan-themed Lions for Lambs (2007).

The Hurt Locker opened in the top ten in the United Kingdom in 103 theaters, scoring the fourth highest per screen average of $3,607, ranking between G-Force and G.I. Joe in overall grosses. The film garnered a half a million dollars its opening week in the United Kingdom of August 28 through September 3, 2009, and has grossed over a million dollars in both the UK and France through early October.

Distribution: Independent film print shortage

According to an article in the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register, as of August 2009 there was a shortage of film prints of The Hurt Locker, as well as other hit independent films such as Food Inc. Distributors told theater owners that they will have to wait weeks or months past the initial U.S. release date, to get the few available prints that are already in distribution. “Sometimes the distributors goof up,” said a film buyer for one theater, “they misjudge how wide they should go." One theory is that the independent films have a hard time competing for screen space during the summer against blockbuster tent-pole movies that hog up as much as half the screens in any given city, flooding the United States market with thousands of prints. Theater owners have also complained about distributors, "bunching too many movies too close together." It is also thought that independent film distributors are trying to cut their losses on prints by recycling them and keeping the number of prints they make down to a minimum, to keep costs down. Given the popularity of some of the films that are "hard to come by", this strategy may be leaving box office money on the table.

Home video

The Hurt Locker was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in North America on January 12, 2010. This disc includes an added audio commentary featuring director Kathryn Bigelow, writer Mark Boal, and other members of the production crew, an image gallery of photos from shooting, and a 15-minute EPK featurette highlighting the filming experience in Jordan and the film's production. The UK Blu-ray has no commentary.

Awards and honors

Main article: List of accolades received by The Hurt Locker

Starting with its initial screening at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival, The Hurt Locker has earned an impressive list of awards and honors. It has also earned its place on more Top 10 lists than any other film of 2009. It is nominated in nine categories at the 82nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, and for three Golden Globe awards.

The film swept most critics groups awards for best director and best picture including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Boston and Las Vegas film critics associations. The Hurt Locker also became only the fourth film to win all three major U.S. critics group prizes (NY, LA and NSFC) joining Goodfellas, Schindler's List and L.A. Confidential.

The Washington DC Area Film Critics award for Best Director was given to Kathryn Bigelow, the first time the honor has gone to a woman. The five awards from the Boston Society of Film Critics was the most given out by that organization to a single film in the group's entire thirty-year history. The film has also been nominated for eight BAFTA awards, including best picture, best director, best actor (Jeremy Renner), best original screenplay, best cinematography, best film editing, best sound mixing, and best special effects.

See also

• 2009 in film
• Cinema of the United States
• List of American films of 2009

References

• Thomson, Patricia (2009). "Risk and Valor". American Cinematographer. 90 (7): 44–50. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

External links

• Official site
• The Hurt Locker at IMDb
• The Hurt Locker at Box Office Mojo
• The Hurt Locker at Rotten Tomatoes