The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker is a 2008 American war 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. It follows an Iraq War bomb 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 and was released in the United States on June 26, 2009, by Summit Entertainment. It received positive reviews from critics, who praised the acting and cinematography. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won six, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and became the first film directed by a woman to win Best Picture. It grossed $50 million worldwide.
The Hurt Locker is considered one of the most influential war films of the 2000s and the 21st century. In 2020, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
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.Sergeant First Class William James replaces 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 bomb vest 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 unfulfilled 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.
Cast
Production
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. It won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Bigelow, and Best Original Screenplay for Boal.
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 for two weeks in 2004. In 2005, Boal pitched a film based on his Playboy article "The Man in the Bomb Suit" to director Kathryn Bigelow. 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. 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 aptitude, is chosen and given the opportunity to go into bomb disarmament and goes toward what everybody else is running from." Bigelow and Boal subsequently decided to avoid "polemics" about the conflict itself in order to focus on suspense.
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."
Most major studios were uninterested in producing the screenplay because Bigelow's previous film K-19: The Widowmaker 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.
Casting
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, Staff Sergeant 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, 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.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 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.
Filming
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. 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. In addition, Bigelow 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.The production also initially had permission from the United States Department of Defense's film liaison unit to film at a real United States Army logistics base in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. However, the filming clearance was withdrawn because military officials believed new scenes which were not in the approved screenplay were being shot. After the U.S. Department of Defense suspended cooperation with the film, it used Royal Jordanian Army equipment instead.
Principal photography began in July 2007 in Jordan. Temperatures averaged over the 44 days of shooting. The actors were housed in a tent with dirt floors and encouraged to method act. Often four or more camera crews filmed simultaneously, which resulted in nearly 200 hours of footage. The 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."
Bigelow's choice to film in Jordan met some resistance. In discussion, she found that her cast and crew shared stereotypes of the region from American culture. "Sadly people in America and Los Angeles have these perceptions", she said. "But once you get off the plane you realize it's like Manhattan without the trees", she continued. As Iraq dominated discourse in America and around the world, Bigelow believed that filmmakers would continue to explore the conflict, making Jordan the natural place to film.
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."Renner remembered, "I got food bugs. Then I got food poisoning: lost 15 lbs in three days". In addition to the burden of the heat, the bomb suit he had to wear all day weighed. In a scene in which his character carries a dead Iraqi boy, Renner fell down some stairs and twisted his ankle, which delayed filming because he could not walk. At that point, "people wanted to quit. All the departments were struggling to get their job done, none of them were communicating". A week later, filming resumed.
Tony Mark recalled the armorer David Fencl's finishing a 12-hour day. He found he had to stay up all night to make proper ammunition for a sniper rifle, as the supplies did not clear Jordanian customs in time for the scheduled shoot. Due to import restrictions on military props, the film's special effects artist Richard Stutsman used Chinese fireworks for gunpowder. One day, he was assembling a prop, and the heat and friction caused the fireworks to blow up in his face. Two days later, he returned to work. The film shoot had few of the normal Hollywood perks; nobody on the set got an air-conditioned trailer or a private bathroom. Renner said that great care was 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."