One of the challenges the Academy Awards has had in recent years is the perception that it’s slow, arthouse-type films that get recognized most years. Although not always the case, films like Nomadland and CODA push the belief. If you’re looking for a near-perfect movie that challenges this, check out 2010’s Best Picture Winner The Hurt Locker before it leaves Netflix. Director Kathryn Bigelow uses her passion for thrillers, already shown in Near Dark and Point Break, to create a movie as tense as those but even more so because of the realism involved. War films aren’t for everyone, but The Hurt Locker is impossible to look away from.
What Is ‘The Hurt Locker’ About?
The Hurt Locker came out in 2009 and takes place during the Iraq War. What makes this one different from so many other films of the era about wars in the Middle East is who the plot centers on. Mark Boal‘s script focuses not on the usual scenes of soldiers engaged in battle with the enemy (although there are scenes of this), but narrows its scope to an explosive disposal team working with those soldiers. Whenever a bomb or something that could be one is found, these are the brave men and women who must suit up and find a way to defuse it without getting themselves or anyone else killed.
Jeremy Renner plays Sergeant First Class William James in his big, breakout lead role years before he ever became Hawkeye. James is great at his job, which is a problem as much as it is a positive. A man broken by what he’s seen in the war, James is cocky and unprofessional at times, putting him at odds with the more serious Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). With an impressive cast including Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, and Brian Geraghty, The Hurt Locker moves from one undetonated bomb to the next. Will these heroes make it out alive?
‘The Hurt Locker’ Is Filled With Near Unbearable Suspense
The Hurt Locker shows the audience what they can expect from the very beginning. The opening scene doesn’t take its time to build characters and setting. It goes right for it immediately by dropping us right into the middle of the action. We get to see up close the near impossible task these men are assigned as they try to safely diffuse an IED, only for it to end tragically.
If the best thriller screenplays are about a figurative ticking bomb counting down, The Hurt Locker makes it literal. This story could have been told with a SWAT team in an American city, but being layered in the tension of the real-life war in Iraq only adds to the suspense, along with the questions. These are good guys, but should they be here? The suspense is pushed to the max because of their jobs, combined with the script’s ability to flesh out its characters and not make them simply faceless tropes where the bomb is the only source of drama. We get to know those involved and don’t want to see them hurt, like the plot of a well-written horror movie. The Hurt Locker is not a mindless action movie but a scary-as-hell character piece.
‘The Hurt Locker’ Beat Impressive Competition at the Academy Awards
The Hurt Locker received near-unanimous praise from critics with an impressive 96% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert gave it a perfect four-star review, writing that it “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. The camera work is at the service of the story. Bigelow knows that you can’t build suspense with shots lasting one or two seconds.” Ebert called it a “leading contender for Academy Awards” and, oh, was he right.
The Hurt Locker wasn’t a box office sensation, making a mere $17 million domestically on a $15 million budget. Coming out in a limited release in June 2009, as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, The Hangover, and Up were racking up hundreds of millions didn’t help, but The Hurt Locker would get the last word on the year the following spring. In March 2010, Kathryn Bigelow’s film was nominated for nine Oscars, and it walked away with six trophies. Although it lost for Cinematography, Original Score, and Jeremy Renner’s performance, The Hurt Locker was recognized as the Best Picture, as well as the best for Bigelow’s direction, Mark Boal’s script, along with Academy Awards for Film Editing, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing.
The Hurt Locker deserved every trophy. Bigelow made the viewer feel like they were standing right next to the characters, as if witnessing a documentary rather than a Hollywood production. This is felt in the sound as well. The Hurt Locker is not about the bomb going off. It’s everything that happens before that moment. The bustle of a city, jets flying overhead, a world of chaos come to life as Jeremy Renner slowly approaches an IED, his heavy feet crunching in the sand. The tension is palpable. Despite winning so many awards, some Iraq veterans had issues with the immature behavior of Renner’s character or inaccuracies about the war in Iraq. It’s the same controversy Bigelow would face a few years later with Zero Dark Thirty. At the end of the day, The Hurt Locker is a work of art meant to provoke emotions. Whether you end up loving it or not, it is your choice, but if you haven’t seen it, check out the best film of 2009 before it’s too late.
The Hurt Locker is now streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
- Release Date
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July 31, 2009
- Runtime
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131 minutes
- Director
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Kathryn Bigelow
- Writers
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Mark Boal
- Producers
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Greg Shapiro, Nicolas Chartier
