Indeed, we've reached the midway point of this 2014 blog series. 86 Best Pictures to blog about, and here we are at blog #43. Today's subject is the 2009 winner The Hurt Locker, which is actually a film that was finished and initially released in 2008, but on a limited basis internationally, not in the U.S., which made it unavailable to qualify for Oscar classification that year. There have been countless films over the years set during war, whether it be a real war such as World War II or Vietnam, or just a fictional war somewhere. For whatever reason, the war in Iraq was always a hard sell at theaters. A number of films were made in the 2000's dealing with the subject, but none of them went anywhere commercially. Some believe it's due to the war being unpopular with the general public. There's probably some truth to that. Some believe it's because families didn't want reminders of their loved ones overseas in Iraq and elsewhere right now potentially battling as what would be on screen. There's probably some truth to that too. As far as box office goes, The Hurt Locker didn't break any new ground either. With a roughly then-$12M total gross, it's the lowest box office total for a Best Picture winner in history. It was out of theaters completely by the time awards season rolled around and didn't return for a second go-round despite all the nominations. An even bigger awards obstacle? Only the highest-grossing film of all time also being nominated for Best Picture. We'll talk more about that after the synopsis.
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Baghdad, 2004. An Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team consists of Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce), Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). They're operating a robotic rover unit to a pile of bags that may contain an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Sure enough, the pile does. Soldiers clear the area as the EOD team sends the robotic rover back with a wagon attached. Unfortunately, the wagon wheel breaks on its way, so Matt puts on the protective suit and carries the wagon there physically. Many Iraqis are watching what is unfolding from a distance, and the soldiers all keep eyes on them. Owen notices one guy with a cell phone and yells for him to drop the phone. Matt tries to get away from the bomb but the man triggers the detonation with his phone, and Matt is killed.
In time, Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) arrives at Camp Victory as the new team leader. He meets JT and seems to be pretty carefree but assures JT he's not here to try and fill Matt's shoes, just to try and do his best. Will is battle-tested and experienced, but JT and Owen have no idea how gung-ho he is yet.
The EOD team drives their vehicle around and Iraqis watch from all sides, windows, roofs, you name it. The team is sent to meet a group of soldiers who have received intel of a possible bomb in a pile of rubble, as someone saw wires on the ground. The team finds the soldiers huddled away from their SUV and get the information. JT says they can send the robot down there but Will wants to suit up and check it out himself. He starts to walk towards the rubble. Owen calls Will "rowdy". JT calls Will "reckless". As if to prove both of those things, Will sets off a smoke grenade to mask him walking to the pile, and then ignores JT's radio transmissions asking why he did that and where he is. Will finally answers, saying he's just creating a diversion. The smoke clears, but another matter ensues as a taxi plows by the soldiers towards where Will is standing. Will pulls out a pistol and the car stops. Will tells him to back the car up, but the driver just stares menacingly. Will shoots the ground near the tires but the car remains. Will shoots out the front windshield but the car still remains. Finally, Will puts the gun right at the driver's forehead and tells him again to back up. Finally, the driver does so until it reaches the soldiers, who drag him out of the car to put him in custody. Will says on the radio, "If he wasn't an insurgent, he sure is now." JT isn't amused.
Will checks out the site and finds a red wire. He traces it and gently pulls up an explosive device. Carefully, and with many Iraqis watching from afar, Will performs the de-activation steps as he obviously has done before and tells JT they're done. Just as JT and Owen start to head towards him, Will sees a second red wire and tells them to hold on. He traces the second wire and it leads to a bunch of wires strewn together. Will gently pulls and unearths six or seven additional bombs from the ground. JT continues to talk on the radio but Will ignores him. As he carefully disarms each one, one Iraqi who was watching from a balcony high above races downstairs towards the outside. He passes by Will just as Will disarms the final bomb, and Will gives him a wave. The man drops his detonator out of sight and keeps running.
Back at camp, JT confronts Will about ignoring him on the radio. Will doesn't seem to care, all that matters is they succeeded. Meanwhile, Owen is talking with Colonel Cambridge (Christian Camargo), the unit psychiatrist. Owen feels guilt about Matt's death and is having trouble coping with all the death and destruction of this war as a whole.
The Bravo Company's rotation now has 37 days left. Will befriends a young boy who's selling pornographic DVDs and likes soccer. The boy talks sassy and Will buys a DVD, saying it should be of good quality. JT and Will continue to disagree on communication and methods of operation. Their next duty is to a building being evacuated by soldiers, as an unmanned vehicle has been sitting for a while and looks to be heavily weighted down in the trunk. Will suits up and heads towards it. As he does so, a sniper shoots from afar to try and blow up the car. There's a small explosion and the car is set ablaze while the soldiers all try to take care of the sniper. After Will extinguishes the fire, he sends JT to the rooftop for coverage and brings Owen with him to the car. Will kicks open the trunk and discovers about a dozen explosive devices inside. Will is impressed, and he takes off the suit. JT questions why he's doing that, to which Will replies if he dies, he wants to die comfortable.
Will cuts through the seats, floor, dashboard and everything else in the car to find the central point of detonation. He comes up empty. Owen notices someone with a video camera from a distance and he alerts JT to it. JT tells Will they should leave because they've been there a long time and more people are watching every minute. Will takes off his headset and throws it out of the car. JT keeps talking, but Owen tells him he's taken off his headset. JT asks Owen to ask Will to put it back on. Will's response is flipping the bird. Owen says to JT that would be a negative. Will continues in the car and pulls a wire that turns on the wipers. He opens the hood of the car, kills the wipers and eventually finds and disarms the detonator. After returning to the jeep, JT comes up to Will and slugs him, telling him to never take off his headset again.
Colonel Reed (David Morse) and his soldiers come up to Will and Reed calls him "hot shit" and a "wildman", both in complimentary fashion. He asks Will how many devices he's disarmed. Will says 873. Reed's impressed. Will finds the DVD kid back at the base and tells him the DVD was of horrible quality. He'll buy another DVD if the kid can stop a soccer goal kick, and the kid succeeds. Will gives him another $5 for a DVD but tells him if it's rotten like the first one, he'll chop his head off. Will says he's just kidding. Owen talks with Cambridge once again and tells him he can't fully understand what's going on in his head because Cambridge isn't out there like he is.
The EOD team is disarming devices from a distance. Will says they need to stop for a moment because he left his gloves down there when they were prepping the explosions. Will takes the jeep and drives there. JT picks up one of the detonators and says to Owen these things misfire all the time. Owen thinks JT is kidding and plays along, but then realizes JT is considering blowing up Will. Ultimately, nothing happens.
23 days left for Bravo Company. The team comes upon four armed men with their faces covered in the desert. Everyone draws their guns and eventually what appears to be the leader of the four drops his gun so Will can approach him. Will is shocked to hear the man speak English and with an English accent. The men reveal themselves to be private military contractors and British mercenaries, and they've captured two prisoners featured on a set of Iraqi Most Wanted playing cards. They have a flat tire, so the EOD team helps them to fix it. The entire group suddenly comes under fire, and when the prisoners attempt to escape in the confusion, the leader of the British foursome (Ralph Fiennes) remembers the bounty for them is "dead or alive" and shoots them. In time, three of the English are killed by the snipers, including the leader. JT takes over the leader's gun post and he and Will work together on scoping out and killing the enemies, who appear to be bunkered nearby at a building. JT has an enemy in the crosshairs but the gun has run out of ammo. Owen gives him a new clip that was on the person of one of the killed Englishmen, but blood has jammed the clip so Owen and Will work to clean it. Owen is having a hard time keeping his wits about him in this fracas. JT succeeds in killing one enemy on the roof, a second on the ground and a third in a window. They stay focused on the building as Owen sees movement elsewhere near railroad tracks amongst a bunch of goats. Owen can see it's a human so he starts shooting since Will told him to take care of it. Owen successfully kills the fourth enemy.
Back at camp, the trio are drinking and wrestling. Owen admits he was scared earlier. Will says he did a great job. JT and Will talk about marriage and children. Will is divorced but still lives with his ex-wife and their infant son. JT has a wife or girlfriend (it's not specified) but doesn't feel he's ready for kids even though she won't stop talking about having one. Owen finds Will has bomb parts under his bunk. Will says he keeps souvenirs from most of the bombs he disarms. JT and Will wrestle and punch some more, and JT winds up underneath Will, who's pinned his shoulders down with his knees and rides him like a bucking bronco. JT gets angry and puts a knife to Will's throat. Everyone calms down, and Will helps JT to bed later.
16 days left for Bravo. Cambridge decides to join the team today since he's tired of sitting behind a desk. The team has been sent to pick up undetonated parts from a building. As the EOD team searches inside the building, Cambridge stays outside and talks with a family who are moving rocks into a wagon. Cambridge tells them it's not safe here today and they should probably move. In the building, the team finds no one but does find it's been recently manned. They also find lots of US ammo, and then a kid covered in blood, dead on a table but stitched up. Will recognizes that it's the DVD kid. The kid is a "body bomb", having had a device surgically implanted into him. Will has JT and Owen get out all the ammo they can. Will then unstitches the kid and removes the device. He covers the body and carries him out. Will is obviously shaken by seeing this kid having been sacrificed in this manner.
Back outside, Cambridge has finally gotten the family to move away and heads to the jeep. He steps and is blown up instantly by an IED. Owen freaks out upon seeing this until Will calms him down. Back at camp, Will is distraught. He calls his ex-wife but doesn't say anything when she answers the phone. The next day, Will goes to the DVD vendor's table, but the vendor now says he doesn't speak English. Will thinks this guy may be selling intelligence to the insurgents. Later that evening, as the vendor is packing up his truck, Will returns with a gun and carjacks him, telling him to bring him to where the kid lived. Will exits the car and the vendor drives off. Will enters the house with his gun drawn. An older man, Professor Nabil (Nabil Koni) is nervous about the gun but welcomes Will, offering him a seat as he is a guest. He also hopes Will works for the CIA. Will realizes he's overstepped his bounds and starts to apologize, but Nabil's wife comes out yelling at Will and breaks something over his head, busting him open. Will leaves the house and walks back to Camp Victory.
Not long after Will returns to camp, the team is sent off on a mission. A tank has blown up and caused major damage in the Green Zone. They need to perform a post-blast assessment. When coming onto the scene, the team sees many casualties and fires. JT believes it was a suicide bomber but Will thinks it could have been a remote detonator, and he wants to search around. JT objects but Will pulls rank. They check a nearby building and find themselves fired upon. Owen is captured and dragged off by two men. JT and Will pursue, find and kill the captors, but in the process Will accidentally shoots Owen's leg.
Back at camp, Will tries to recover from this horrible day. He showers fully-clothed and almost breaks down. The next morning as he's leaving for his vehicle, another kid comes up to him, talking just like the first kid, wanting to sell DVDs and play soccer. Disgusted, Will blows him off. Owen is flying out of Iraq due to his injury. His femur is shattered in nine places and the doctors have said he'll walk again but it will be many months. Owen is pissed at Will for having to go looking for trouble just to get his adrenaline fix.
2 days left in Bravo Company's rotation. Soldiers have cleared an area as the EOD team arrives. A man has a bomb strapped to him, apparently as a suicide bomber. However, the man claims to have changed his mind and wants the bomb removed. Through a translator, Will tells the man to take off his shirt. The bomb is large and complicated. The man gets down on his knees and puts his hands behind his head as directed. Will suits up and goes to him. JT is concerned, despite his differences with Will. Will finds a timer and needs bolt cutters. JT rushes to him with the bolt cutters. The locks are very strong and Will can only cut one before they realize there's just not enough time. Will orders JT to leave the area. Will apologizes to the man but tells him there's no time, and then he runs off too just before the bomb detonates, sending Will to the ground bloody, but OK.
Heading back to camp, JT says he's not ready to die. He wants a son. Will assures JT he isn't going to die here, because they're heading home tomorrow. JT says he's done and will not be coming back for a second tour. He wonders how Will can take such risks having a son already. Will says he just doesn't think about the risks.
Days pass, and Will is shopping at a supermarket with his ex-wife (Evangeline Lilly). Will seems unsure what to do in the store, simply walking down the aisles as if he's seeing all this stuff for the first time. In the cereal aisle, he's surrounded by countless boxes and has no idea what any of it is, so he just throws a random box into the cart. Back at the James home, Will cleans leaves from the gutter. In the kitchen, he tells story after story about his time in Iraq. His wife listens but doesn't reply, she just asks for him to shred some carrots for dinner. Will later talks to his infant son. He tells him he knows he loves all his toys and things, but as you get older, you love less stuff. Will says in the case of himself, there's only one thing he really loves...
A military plane lands in Iraq and a bunch of soldiers disembark, all part of the Delta Company. One man who exits the plane with a smile on his face is Sergeant First Class William James, who in a jump-cut now is wearing a protective suit as he heads towards an explosive device...and he has that same smile on his face. Will is once again doing the one thing in life he truly loves.
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Screenwriter Mark Boal was a freelance journalist who traveled with an American bomb squad in Iraq in 2002. His screenplay is based on what he experienced. During this two-week period, he would keep in touch with director Kathryn Bigelow via email.....Most of the film was shot in Jordan with Iraqi refugees used as extras.....Bigelow's ex-husband, director James Cameron, convinced her to make this film.....When the movie first came out, few knew what the title meant. "The hurt locker" is actually Vietnam War-era slang for a situation involving trouble or pain. Apparently, in Iraq the term modified to explosions meaning being sent to "the hurt locker".....Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd suffered heat stroke during the first week of filming.....The main roles were deliberately cast by relative unknowns. All of the more renowned stars--Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly, Guy Pearce--have less than 10 minutes of screen time each, and two of their characters are killed off.
Critics loved the film. Many called it a great action thriller, gripping and incredibly tense. Tense is right. The direction is impeccable. A lot of military personnel weren't as complimentary, with many saying the methods used in the film were absurd. Still, most of them enjoyed the movie on its own. Awards-wise, the film was successful from the start, and that led up to the Oscars, where the Academy feted The Hurt Locker with 9 nominations. That year was pretty much a two-horse race with this film and Avatar, which turned out to break the record for the biggest box office take in history by this point. And in one of those situations you just couldn't script, that film was directed by Kathryn Bigelow's ex, James Cameron. This made for high drama in the media, but not with the two directors. They're still very close friends, and Cameron himself said that Bigelow was going to win the top prizes.
James was right. While The Hurt Locker didn't win Original Score (Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders), Cinematography (Ackroyd) or Lead Actor (Renner), it took home Oscars for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (Boal), Best Film Editing (Bob Murawski and Chris Innis), Best Sound Mixing (Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett), Best Sound Editing (Ottosson)...and yes, Best Director (Bigelow). Bigelow's win was the first for a woman in history, and Cameron was the first person to stand and congratulate her. The Best Picture win came over Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, Inglorious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air. This was the first year since the Academy had increased the number of eligible Best Picture nominees. One of Hurt's producers, Nicolas Chartier, was actually the first nominee ever barred from attending the ceremony in history due to having sent Academy members an email during the voting period trying to coerce them to vote for their smaller film over the $500M blockbuster that was Avatar. Chartier later apologized for the email, and he did receive his Oscar a couple of days after the ceremony.
There's virtually not a single comic moment in The Hurt Locker. There doesn't need to be. It's enthralling, gritty and ultimately tells a hell of a story. William James is quite a character study, and Bigelow's work is nothing short of amazing. There are a few pretty grotesque moments in the film, but that shouldn't scare anyone away from checking this movie out. Yes, Avatar was an incredible and successful happening, but The Hurt Locker to me was the true achievement for 2009.
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