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Bombs Away |
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A deadly signature of the war in Iraq is the large number of unexploded roadside bombs. THE HURT LOCKER looks at the men who put their lives at risk to defuse them, and the adrenaline rush that comes with the job. |
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Kathryn Bigelow’s blistering war film The Hurt Locker has exploded a pair of unspoken Hollywood rules: that movies based on the Iraq war are largely ignored, and that female filmmakers do not win Oscars for Best Director.
The Hurt Locker was the film that dominated the 82nd Academy Awards with six wins, including Best Picture, Best Director, Editing and Original Screenplay.
That the film beat James Cameron’s almighty Avatar, considered a Best Picture favourite, is a testament to the effectiveness of this tense and compelling action thriller.
Ironically perhaps, it was Cameron who convinced ex-wife Bigelow to take the directing job on The Hurt Locker. Moreover, Cameron speculated that the movie“could be the Platoon for the Iraq war”.
Indeed, it became the first modern-war film since Platoon in 1986 to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Films depicting the conflict in Iraq, while often critically acclaimed and populated by name actors, are box office poison. The Hurt Locker was no exception, opening in limited release in the US on 26 June 2009.
The film has since taken $15 million at the US box office and is the lowest grossing Best Picture Oscar winner to date. Local distributor Village Roadshow were prepared to take the movie straight to DVD, before the Oscar buzz began to resonate and public interest in the picture grew.
The Hurt Locker not only explores what motivates the men who work in a high-risk profession, but also looks at the psychological fallout of an addiction to adrenaline and danger.
It’s also one of the most suspenseful and exciting action films of the year, making it the perfect fit for a director who has proven herself to be a mistress of the genre and whose body of work is populated by risk-taking males, be it the skydiving surfers of Point Break, the submariners of K-19: The Widowmaker, or the sensation dealers of Strange Days.
“The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug”. This quote from war correspondent Chris Hedges, which opens the film, best describes the mindset of its principal protagonist – reckless Sergeant William James, played by Jeremy Renner.
It was men like James that had a profound impact on screenwriter Mark Boal, who spent a period in the company of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team during their tour of Iraq. The experience left an indelible impression on Boal, inspiring him to pen a fictional story about the men who work voluntarily with bombs.
“On a character level I was intrigued by the sort of mental and psychological framework that a bomb technician develops on the job,” Boal explains.
“What type of personality is comfortable with extreme risk and living so close to death? And in a thematic sense, the bomb squad seemed like a promising entry-point for a war movie.”
Kathryn Bigelow was Boal’s choice to direct the film, and the writer was thrilled when she agreed to take on the project.
“When I learned that these men volunteer for this dangerous work, and often grow so fond of it that they can imagine doing nothing else, I knew I had found my next film,” she says.
Bigelow and Boal set out to make an independent, experimental, character driven war film that was also an exercise in suspense, requiring a heightened sense of realism in order to be completely effective.
To achieve an intimate, documentary feel to the film, Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who shot United 93, used multiple cameras to capture the soldiers’ perspective of the events from various POVs.
Moreover, for the explosive set pieces and resulting shock waves, the only way to make it look real was to do it for real. “The art department gave us big sets for the explosions,” says Ackroyd.
“People were doing their stunts as big long takes and the camera was just participating in it.”
Boal hopes that the film will allow viewers to appreciate the sacrifices made by the American troops on a daily basis, and deliver the message that there is a high price to heroism.
“James is a genuine hero,” he says, “but his heroism doesn’t translate to personal happiness. He’s so damaged that he can’t see any outcome for himself other than disarming bombs.”
US ARMY EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE DISPOSAL
F A S T F A C T S
• In 2004, there were only about 150 trained Army EOD techs in Iraq.
• The job was so dangerous that EOD techs were five times more likely to die than all other soldiers in the theater. That same year, the insurgency reportedly placed a $25,000 bounty on the heads of EOD techs
• Bomb shrapnel travels at 2,700 feet per second. Overpressure, the deadly wave of supercompressed gases that expands from the center of a blast, travels at 13,000 miles an hour – at a force equal to 700 tons per square inch.
• Separations and relationship troubles are so common among EOD teams that soldiers sometimes joke that EOD stands for ‘every one divorced’.
• Bomb-disposal teams were first created in World War II. Starting in 1942, when Germany blitzed London with timedelayed bombs, specially trained U.S. soldiers joined British officers who diagrammed the devices using pencil sketches before they attempted to defuse them with common tools.
• Bomb techs are trained at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The Army looks for volunteers who are confident, forthright, comfortable under extreme pressure and emotionally stable. To get into the training program, a prospective tech first needs a high score on the mechanical-aptitude portion of the armed forces exam. Once the school begins, candidates are gradually winnowed out over six months of training, and only 40 percent will graduate.
Discover The Hurt Locker on DVD and Blu-ray at JB Hi-Fi » |
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