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Ashlie Hagenson
The Hurt Locker is a 2008 American war thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal. It stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Guy Pearce. The film follows an Iraq War Explosive Ordnance Disposal team who are targeted by insurgents and shows their psychological reactions to the stress of combat. Boal drew on his experience during embedded access to write the screenplay.
The Hurt Locker premiered at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival before it was released in the United States on June 26, 2009, by Summit Entertainment. The film earned acclaim from critics, who praised Bigelow's directing, Renner's performance, Boal's screenplay, editing, musical score, cinematography, sound design and action sequences, although some veterans have criticized the film's depiction of Iraq War combat as inaccurate.[2] The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It was the first Best Picture winner to have been directed by a woman. The film grossed $49.2 million worldwide.
It is now considered to be one of the best war films of the 2000s and the 21st century.[3][4][5][6] In 2020, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[7]
During the second year of the Iraq War, a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team with Bravo Company identifies and attempts to destroy an improvised explosive device with a robot, but the wagon carrying the trigger charge breaks. Team leader Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson places the charge by hand, but is killed when an Iraqi insurgent uses a cell phone to detonate the charge. Squadmate Specialist Owen Eldridge feels guilty for failing to kill the man with the phone.
Staff Sergeant William James replaces Staff Sergeant Thompson. He is often at odds with Sergeant J.T. Sanborn because he prefers to defuse devices by hand and does not communicate his plans. He blocks Sanborn's view with smoke grenades as he approaches an IED and defuses it only moments before an Iraqi insurgent attempts to detonate it with a 9-volt battery. In another incident, James insists on disarming a complex car bomb despite Sanborn's protests that it is taking too long; James responds by taking off his headset and "flipping off" Sanborn. Sanborn is so worried by his conduct that he openly suggests fragging James to Eldridge while they are exploding unused ordnance outside of base.
On their return to base, they encounter five armed men in Iraqi garb by an SUV which has a flat tire. After a tense encounter, James learns they are friendly British private military contractors. While fixing the tire, they come under sniper fire. Three of the contractors are killed before James and Sanborn take over counter-sniping, killing three insurgents. Eldridge kills the fourth who attempts to flank their position.
During a raid on a warehouse, James discovers a "body bomb" he believes is Beckham, an Iraqi boy who sells DVDs and plays soccer outside of base. During the evacuation, Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge, the camp's psychiatrist and Eldridge's counselor, is killed in an explosion; Eldridge is further traumatized. James sneaks off base with Beckham's apparent associate at gunpoint, telling him to take him to Beckham's home. He is left at the home of an unrelated Iraqi professor, and James flees.
Called to a petrol tanker detonation, James decides to hunt for the insurgents responsible nearby. Sanborn protests, but when James begins a pursuit, he and Eldridge follow. After they split up, insurgents capture Eldridge. James and Sanborn rescue him, although Eldridge is shot in the leg. The following morning, James is approached by Beckham, alive and well, whom James ignores and walks by silently. Before being airlifted for surgery, Eldridge angrily blames James for his injury.
The day before their deployment ends, they are called to disarm a suicide bomb strapped to a man against his will. James cannot cut the locks off before the timer expires, and they are forced to abandon the man. Sanborn is distraught at the near-death experience, and lamenting that no one other than his parents would have been sad at his death, tells James that he wishes to leave the service in order to have a son.
After Bravo Company's rotation ends, James returns to his ex-wife Connie and their infant son. However, he is bored by routine civilian life at home. James confesses to his son there is only one thing he knows he loves. He starts another year-long tour of duty with Delta Company.
The small-budget film was independently produced and directed by Kathryn Bigelow. The screenplay was written by Mark Boal, a freelance writer who was embedded as a journalist in 2004 with a U.S. Army EOD team in Iraq.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in Italy during 2008. After being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was picked up for distribution in the United States by Summit Entertainment. In May 2009, it was the Closing Night selection for Maryland Film Festival. The film was released in the United States on June 26, 2009, but received a more widespread theatrical release on July 24, 2009.
The film was nominated for nine Oscars at the 82nd Academy Awards in 2010, although the film had not yet recovered its budget by the time of the ceremony.[8] It won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Bigelow (the first woman to win this award), and Best Original Screenplay for Boal.
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 for two weeks in 2004.[9] In 2005, Boal pitched a film based on his Playboy article "The Man in the Bomb Suit" to director Kathryn Bigelow.[2] Director Bigelow was familiar with Boal's work before his experiences, having adapted one of his other Playboy articles as the short-lived television series The Inside in 2002. When Boal was embedded with the squad, he accompanied its members 10 to 15 times a day to watch their tasks, and kept in touch with Bigelow via email about his experiences.[10] Boal used his experiences as the basis of a fictional drama based on 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."[11] Bigelow was fascinated with exploring "the psychology behind the type of soldier who volunteers for this particular conflict and then, because of [their] aptitude, is chosen and given the opportunity to go into bomb disarmament and goes toward what everybody else is running from."[12] Bigelow and Boal subsequently decided to avoid "polemics" about the conflict itself in order to focus on suspense.[2]
While working with Boal in 2005 on the script, originally titled The Something Jacket, Bigelow began to do some preliminary, rough storyboards to get an idea of the specific location needed. Bomb disarmament protocol requires a containment area. She wanted to make the film as authentic as possible and "put the audience into the Humvee, into a boots-on-the-ground experience."[12]
Most major studios were uninterested in producing the screenplay because Bigelow's previous film K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) had been a box-office bomb and because Iraq War films tended to be unprofitable. Nicolas Chertier finally greenlit the film at Voltage Pictures with a $30 million budget.[2]
For the main characters, Bigelow made a point of casting relatively unknown actors: "it underscored the tension because with the lack of familiarity also comes a sense of unpredictability."[12] Renner's character, Staff Sergeant William James, is a composite character, with qualities based on individuals whom screenwriter Boal knew when embedded with the bomb squad.[10] Bigelow cast Renner based on his work in Dahmer, a film about Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer whose victims were boys.[13] To prepare for the film, the cast spent a week living and training at Fort Irwin, a United States Army reservation in the Mojave Desert in California. They were taught to use C4 explosives, learned how to render safe improvised explosive devices, and how to wear a bomb suit.[2][13]
Mackie plays Sergeant J. T. Sanborn. Describing the experience of filming in Jordan in the summer, he said, "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."[14]
Several hundred thousand Iraqi refugees live in Jordan. Bigelow cast refugees who had theatrical backgrounds, such as Suhail Dabbach who plays the innocent man used as a suicide bomber at the film's end.[10]
The film was shot in Jordan, within miles of the Iraqi border, to achieve Bigelow's goal of authenticity. Iraqi refugees were used for extras and the cast worked in the intense heat of the Middle East. Bigelow had wanted to film in Iraq, but the production security team could not guarantee their safety from Iraqi insurgents.[12] The filmmakers had scouted for locations in Morocco, which Chertier preferred due to its cheaper cost but which Bigelow felt did not resemble Iraq closely enough. Boal's contacts in the Central Intelligence Agency suggested Jordan because its capital city of Amman strongly resembled Baghdad and because the Jordanian royal family was very supportive of Western film productions. The Jordanian government, which was trying to start a domestic film industry, would indeed be very generous towards the film. It offered discounted shipping rates and even helped fund the film when its bond was nearly withdrawn after a line producer quit in the first three weeks of filming. This assistance allowed Bigelow to cut the budget to just $15 million. Jordan also used the making of the movie to found a film school and an internship program.[2] In addition, she wanted to get as close to the war zone as possible. Some of the locations were less than three miles from the Iraqi border, and were within a few miles of active conflict zones in Iraq itself.[2][15]
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