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 near-universal acclaim from critics, who praised Bigelow's directing, Renner's performance, writing, and action sequences. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. It is one of only two Best Picture winners to have been directed by a female director and to also have a Best Director win, The other being Chloe Zhao for her film Nomadland. The film grossed $49.2 million worldwide.
In 2004, Sergeant First Class William James arrives as the new team leader of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit in the Iraq War. He replaces Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson, who was killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Baghdad. His team includes Sergeant J. T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge.
James is often approached by an Iraqi youth nicknamed "Beckham", attempting to sell DVDs. James challenges him to a game of football and takes a liking to him.
Sanborn and Eldridge consider James' maverick disposal methods and attitude reckless, raising tensions. When they are assigned to destroy explosives, James returns to the detonation site to pick up his gloves. Sanborn openly contemplates killing him by "accidentally" triggering the explosives, making Eldridge uncomfortable. Nothing is done, and tensions continue to increase.
Returning to Camp Victory in their Humvee, the team encounters five armed men in traditional Arab garb and casual attire standing near a Ford Excursion, which has a flat tire. James' team has a tense encounter with their leader, who reveals they are private military contractors and British mercenaries. They have captured two prisoners featured on the most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. The group comes under fire; when the prisoners attempt to escape in the confusion, the leader of the mercenaries shoots them, as they are valuable dead or alive. Enemy snipers kill three of the mercenaries, including their leader. Sanborn and James borrow a gun to dispatch three attackers, while Eldridge kills a fourth.
During a raid on a warehouse, James discovers a body he believes is Beckham, in which a bomb has been surgically implanted. During the evacuation, Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge, the camp's psychiatrist and a friend of Eldridge, is killed in an explosion; Eldridge blames himself for his death. James breaks into an Iraqi professor's house, seeking revenge for Beckham, but his search reveals nothing.
Called to a petrol tanker detonation, James decides to hunt for the insurgents responsible, guessing they are still nearby. Sanborn protests, but when James begins a pursuit, he and Eldridge reluctantly follow. After they split up, insurgents capture Eldridge. James and Sanborn rescue him, but one of James' rounds hits Eldridge in the leg. The following morning, James is approached by Beckham, whom James believed was dead, and James walks by silently. Before being airlifted for surgery, Eldridge angrily blames James for his injury.
James and Sanborn's unit is called to another mission in their last two days of their rotation. An innocent Iraqi civilian has had a bomb vest strapped to his chest. James tries to cut off the locks to remove the vest, but there are too many of them. He abandons the man who is then killed when the bomb explodes. Sanborn is distraught by the man's death. He confesses to James he can no longer cope with the pressure and wants to return home and have a son.
After Bravo Company's rotation ends, James returns to his ex-wife Connie and their infant son, who still lives with him in his house. 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 tour of duty, serving with Delta Company, a U.S. Army EOD unit on its 365-day rotation.
Casting
- Jeremy Renner as Sergeant First Class William James
- Anthony Mackie as Sergeant J. T. Sanborn
- Brian Geraghty as Specialist Owen Eldridge
- Guy Pearce as Staff Sergeant Matthew Thompson
- Christian Camargo as Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge
- David Morse as Colonel Reed
- Ralph Fiennes as the leader of a Private Military Company unit
- Evangeline Lilly as Connie James
- Christopher Sayegh as Beckham
- Malcolm Barrett as Sergeant Foster
- Sam Spruell as Contractor Charlie
- Suhail Dabbach as a black-suit suicide bomber
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.
Since the film was not released in the United States until 2009, it was eligible for the Academy Awards only the following year, where it was nominated for nine Oscars. Although the film had not recovered its budget by the time of the ceremony, 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. Director Bigelow was familiar with Boal's work before his experiences, having adapted one of his 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. 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." 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."
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."
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." Renner's character, Sergeant First Class William James, is a composite character, with qualities based on individuals whom screenwriter Boal knew when embedded with the bomb squad. Bigelow cast Renner based on his work in Dahmer, a film about Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer whose victims were boys. To prepare for the film, Renner spent a week living and training at Fort Irwin, a U.S. military reservation in the Mojave Desert in California. He was taught to use C4 explosives, learned how to render safe improvised explosive devices, and how to wear a bomb suit.
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."
Several hundred thousand refugees of Iraq live in Jordan. Bigelow cast refugees who had theatrical backgrounds, such as Suhail Dabbach. He plays the innocent man used as a suicide bomber at the film's end.
