The Hurt Locker (2008)
By: Kathryn Bigelow (director), Mark Boal (writer)
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Christian Camargo, Evangeline Lilly
Iraq. Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb.
I’m sure I would have seen The Hurt Locker eventually even had it not been nominated for an Oscar, but I can’t deny that’s why I watched it today, of all days. The only two films nominated for Best Picture I hadn’t seen were this one and Avatar, and my desire to see Jame Cameron’s masturbatory opus is pretty much nil. Naturally, The Hurt Locker was a fantastic film, and I’m really happy to say it absolutely deserves its nomination.
Written by a writer who had been embedded with a bomb squad in Iraq, the film details the lives of an Army EOD unit as they move in and around Baghdad locating and defusing bombs. As could be expected with a movie having to do with DIFFUSING BOMBS, it puts you on the edge of your seat for a great deal of the film. There was a point when I literally gasped out loud, which is something I very rarely do when watching movies. It is completely engrossing, full of suspenseful and genuinely intense moments offset by intimate looks into the soldiers as people, and it really is just god damned phenomenal.
I could ramble on about all of the things that make this movie good, but instead I’m just going to implore you to SEE FOR YOURSELF. This is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year, and maybe in the last ten years, too.
I’M GLAD YOU LIKED THIS OMG.
HOLY CRAP, IT WAS SO GOOD. If this one or A Serious Man don’t win Best Picture, I may cry.
A Serious Man definitely won’t win, so we’ll have to count on this one. Now that Kathryn Bigelow won the DGA, I’m much more confident in her winning the Best Direction Oscar (statistically speaking) and then that in turn improves the odds of the movie winning Best Picture.
Also, I watched The Blind Side and it wasn’t as bad as the trailers looked (that was one terrible trailer, omg) but I’m not seeing it as Oscar worthy. Also, the kid brother, OMG. Wanted to punch him in the face.
I hate that I give a shit about the Oscars at all, but I suppose I might as well embrace the madness now that I’ve started back down this path. I have a really bad feeling Up in the Air might get it, which will be such a shame, even if George Clooney was good in it. George Clooney is good in everything, and The Hurt Locker was awesome all-around.
I’m glad you didn’t hate The Blind Side! I agree, though, I’m not sure it’s Best Picture-worthy, especially considering some of the seriously amazing films from last year.
I care about the Oscars insofar as a) I just like awards, and b) that, like it or not, people who are not as hardcore about their movie watching are going to use it as a barometer for what they think they should be watching. So, it’s important that shitty films do not win!
I thought 2009 was a pretty bad year for movies, actually, but even in a not-so-great year, The Blind Side is still definitely not Oscar worthy.
Very, very excited that this is worth my while. I think it might still be in the cinema over here, I’m going to have to look and see.