The Hurt Locker
The Hurt Locker is a 2009 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
- Kathryn Bigelow
- Mark Boal
- Nicolas Chartier
- Greg Shapiro
- Voltage Pictures
- Grosvenor Park Media
- Film Capital Europe Funds
- First Light Productions
- Kingsgate Films
- September 4, 2008 (Venice)
- June 26, 2009 (United States)
131 minutes
United States
English
$15 million[1]
$49.2 million[1]
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]
Plot[edit]
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.
Release[edit]
Festival screenings[edit]
The Hurt Locker had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2008, and the film received a 10-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening.[29] At the festival, the film won the SIGNIS award,[30] the Arca Cinemagiovani Award (Arca Young Cinema Award) for "Best Film Venezia 65" (chosen by an international youth jury); the Human Rights Film Network Award; and the Venezia Cinema Award known as the "Navicella".[31] The film also screened at the 33rd Annual Toronto International Film Festival on September 8,[29] where it generated "keen interest", though distributors were reluctant to buy it since previous films about the Iraq War performed poorly at the box office.[32] Summit Entertainment purchased the film for distribution in the United States in what was perceived as "a skittish climate for pic sales".[33]
In the rest of 2008, The Hurt Locker screened at the 3rd Zurich Film Festival,[34] the 37th Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, the 21st Mar del Plata Film Festival,[35] the 5th Dubai International Film Festival, and the 12th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.[36] In 2009, The Hurt Locker screened at the Göteborg International Film Festival,[37] the 10th Film Comment Selects festival,[38] and the South by Southwest film festival.[39] It was the closing night film at Maryland Film Festival 2009, with Bigelow presenting. It had a centerpiece screening at the 3rd AFI Dallas International Film Festival, where director Kathryn Bigelow received the Dallas Star Award.[40] Other 2009 festivals included the Human Rights Nights International Film Festival,[41] the Seattle International Film Festival,[42] and the Philadelphia Film Festival.[43]
Theatrical run[edit]
The Hurt Locker was first publicly released in Italy by Warner Bros. on October 10, 2008.[29] Summit Entertainment picked the film up for distribution in the United States for $1.5 million after it was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.[44]
The Hurt Locker was released in the United States on June 26, 2009, with a limited release at four theaters in Los Angeles and New York City.[45] Over its first weekend the film grossed $145,352, averaging $36,338 per theater. The following weekend, beginning July 3, the film grossed $131,202 at nine theaters, averaging $14,578 per theater.[46]
It held the highest per-screen average of any film playing theatrically in the United States for the first two weeks of its release,[1] gradually moving into the top 20 chart with much wider-released, bigger budget studio films.[47] It held around number 13 or number 14 on box office charts for an additional four weeks. Summit Entertainment took The Hurt Locker wider to more than 200 screens on July 24, 2009, and more than 500 screens on July 31, 2009.
The film's final gross was $17,017,811 in the United States and Canada, and $32,212,961 in other countries, bringing its worldwide total to $49,230,772. It was a success against its budget of $15 million.[1]
According to the Los Angeles Times, The Hurt Locker performed better than most recent dramas about Middle East conflict. The film outperformed all other Iraq-war-themed films such as In the Valley of Elah (2007), Stop-Loss (2008) and Afghanistan-themed Lions for Lambs (2007).[44]
In the United States, The Hurt Locker is one of only five Best Picture winners (The English Patient, Amadeus, The Artist, and The Shape of Water being the other four) to never enter the weekend box office top 5 since top 10 rankings were first recorded in 1982. It is also one of the only two Best Picture winners on record never to have entered the weekend box office top 10 (The Artist being the other).
The Hurt Locker opened in the top ten in the United Kingdom in 103 theaters, scoring the fourth-highest per-screen average of $3,607, ranking between G-Force and G.I. Joe in overall grosses. The film garnered half a million dollars in its opening weekend in the United Kingdom of August 28 through August 30, 2009,[48] and grossed over a million dollars in the UK, Japan, Spain, and France through March.[49]
Distribution: Independent film print shortage[edit]
According to an article in the Springfield, Illinois State Journal-Register, as of August 2009, there was a shortage of film prints of The Hurt Locker, as well as other hit independent films such as Food, Inc.[50] Distributors told theater owners that they would have to wait weeks or months past the initial U.S. release date to get the few available prints that were already in distribution. "Sometimes the distributors goof up," said a film buyer for one theater. "They misjudge how wide they should go."[50] One theory is that the independent films have a hard time competing for screen space during the summer against blockbuster tent-pole films that take up as much as half the screens in any given city, flooding the United States market with thousands of prints. Theater owners have also complained about distributors "bunching too many movies too close together".[50][51] It is also thought that independent film distributors are trying to cut their losses on prints by recycling them. Given the popularity of some of the films that are "hard to come by", this strategy may be leaving box office money on the table.[50][51]
Home media[edit]
The Hurt Locker was released on DVD and Blu-ray in North America on January 12, 2010. This disc includes an added audio commentary featuring director Kathryn Bigelow, writer Mark Boal, and other members of the production crew; an image gallery of photos from shooting; and a 15-minute EPK featurette highlighting the filming experience in Jordan and the film's production. The UK DVD and Blu-ray have no commentary.
On February 22, 2022, two years after getting a digital 4K release, Lionsgate and Best Buy released a steelbook of the movie, marking the first time it came to 4K resolution.
U.S. sales of the DVD topped $30 million by mid-August 2010.[52]
Reception[edit]
Critical response[edit]
The Hurt Locker received widespread acclaim, with Renner's performance receiving praise from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 97%, based on 290 reviews, with a weighted average rating of 8.5/10. It was the second highest-rated film of 2009, behind Pixar's Up. The critics' consensus reads, "A well-acted, intensely shot, action filled war epic, Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is thus far the best of the recent dramatizations of the Iraq War."[53] Metacritic, which assigns a normalized score, gave the film an average score of 95 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[54]
Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times rated the film as the best of 2009, writing, "The Hurt Locker 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." He applauded how the suspense was built, calling the film "spellbinding". Ebert considered Renner "a leading contender for Academy Awards", writing, "His performance is not built on complex speeches but on a visceral projection of who this man is and what he feels. He is not a hero in a conventional sense."[55] He eventually ranked it the second-best film of the decade, behind only Synecdoche, New York.[56]
Richard Corliss of Time magazine also spoke highly of Renner's performance, calling it a highlight of the film. Corliss wrote,
Lawsuits[edit]
Sarver lawsuit[edit]
In early March 2010, U.S. Army bomb disposal expert Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against The Hurt Locker. Sarver's lawsuit claimed he used the term "hurt locker" and the phrase "war is a drug" around Boal, that his likeness was used to create the character William James, and that the portrayal of James defames Sarver.[90] Sarver said he felt "just a little bit hurt, a little bit felt left out" and cheated out of "financial participation" in the film.[91] Sarver claimed he originated the title of the film; however, according to the film's website, the title is a decades-old colloquialism for being injured, as in "they sent him to the hurt locker."[92] It dates back to the Vietnam War where it was one of several phrases meaning "in trouble or at a disadvantage; in bad shape."[93]
Boal defended himself to the press, saying "the film is a work of fiction inspired by many people's stories."[91] He said he talked to more than 100 soldiers during his research.[94] Jody Simon, a Los Angeles-based entertainment lawyer, noted that "soldiers don't have privacy," and that when the military embedded Boal they gave him full permission to use his observations as he saw fit. Summit Entertainment, the producers of the film, said in early March that they hoped for a quick resolution to the suit.[91] In the December 8, 2011, issue of The Hollywood Reporter, it was announced that the court threw out Sarver's lawsuit. A federal judge ordered him to pay more than $180,000 in attorney fees.[95]
Copyright infringement lawsuit[edit]
On May 12, 2010, Voltage Pictures, the production company behind The Hurt Locker, announced that it would attempt to sue "potentially tens of thousands" of online computer users who downloaded unlicensed copies of the film using the BitTorrent and P2P networks. It would be the largest lawsuit of its kind.[96][97] On May 28, 2010, it filed a complaint against 5,000 unidentified BitTorrent users in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia; Voltage announced its intention to demand $1,500 from each defendant to release him or her from the suit.[98] Several people, however, refused to settle with the studio.[99] The US Copyright Group (USCG) has since dropped all cases against the alleged Hurt Locker downloaders.[100]
On August 29, 2011, the Federal Court of Canada ordered three Canadian ISPs—Bell Canada, Cogeco, and Vidéotron—to disclose the names and addresses of the subscribers whose IP addresses were suspected of having downloaded a copy of the film. The ISPs were given two weeks to comply with the order.[101]