The Hurt Locker
Academy Award × 6
Rent/Purchase
During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.
What critics thought
Kathryn Bigelow's bomb-disposal thriller earned near-universal acclaim for its visceral, nerve-shredding tension and Jeremy Renner's performance as a man who seems to need war the way others need oxygen. The main points of friction were whether the film's psychological portrait of its protagonist is genuinely complex or conveniently vague, and whether its intoxicating immersion in combat ultimately glamorizes the very thing it seems to examine.
“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.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“The movie is a viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or mindless noise.”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“This unapologetic celebration of a testosterone-fuelled lust for war may gall. Yet there is something original and distinctive about the film's willingness to admit that for some men (and many moviegoers) war carries an intrinsic dramatic charge.”
Guy Westwell·Sight & Sound
“its fuzzy (and hardly original) psychology.”
Variety
“For all the graphic violence, bloody explosions and, literally, human butchery that is shown in the film, The Hurt Locker is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles for the U.S. Army that I have seen.”
Tara McKelvey·The American Prospect
Genres
Drama, Thriller, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorKathryn Bigelow
StarringJeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, David Morse, Guy Pearce
ComposerBuck Sanders, Marco Beltrami
The Hurt Locker
Academy Award × 6
During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work.
What critics thought
Kathryn Bigelow's bomb-disposal thriller earned near-universal acclaim for its visceral, nerve-shredding tension and Jeremy Renner's performance as a man who seems to need war the way others need oxygen. The main points of friction were whether the film's psychological portrait of its protagonist is genuinely complex or conveniently vague, and whether its intoxicating immersion in combat ultimately glamorizes the very thing it seems to examine.
“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.”
Roger Ebert·Chicago Sun-Times
“The movie is a viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or mindless noise.”
A. O. Scott·The New York Times
“This unapologetic celebration of a testosterone-fuelled lust for war may gall. Yet there is something original and distinctive about the film's willingness to admit that for some men (and many moviegoers) war carries an intrinsic dramatic charge.”
Guy Westwell·Sight & Sound
“its fuzzy (and hardly original) psychology.”
Variety
“For all the graphic violence, bloody explosions and, literally, human butchery that is shown in the film, The Hurt Locker is one of the most effective recruiting vehicles for the U.S. Army that I have seen.”
Tara McKelvey·The American Prospect
Genres
Drama, Thriller, War
Cast & Crew
DirectorKathryn Bigelow
StarringJeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, David Morse, Guy Pearce
ComposerBuck Sanders, Marco Beltrami
Rent/Purchase