Flashback Friday: The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2009)

The Oscars are coming up! Over the next few weeks, we'll be taking a look at some of the Academy Award winners for Best Picture. Movie Critic's Club will be analyzing these films just like every other week, but with special attention towards their Oscar victory. We'll be comparing other Best Picture nominees from the same year, and seeing whether or not the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences correctly chose the best film of the respective year. To kick the coverage off, and since Kathryn Bigelow is topping both headlines and box office receipts for this year's Zero Dark Thirty, we're taking a look at her Best Picture-winning film. Today on Flashback Friday, we're looking at 2009's The Hurt Locker.

March 7, 2010 was a day for Oscar history when Barbara Streisand announced Kathryn Bigelow as the winner of the Oscar for Best Director during the 82nd Academy Awards. On that day, Bigelow became the first female to ever win Best Director at the Oscars. Streisand, a frequent Oscar snub, greeted her with open arms. The later win for Best Picture, announced by Tom Hanks, brought The Hurt Locker's total wins to six, out of a possible nine nominations.

History was made, as the white male-oriented Academy finally selected a woman as their winner of this huge award. But was this really the film to start with? Was the direction in The Hurt Locker so magnificent that it warranted an unprecedented win?

The Hurt Locker is the intense thriller about United States Army bomb diffusers in Iraq. After losing their former commander, a bomb squad gets Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner, nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for the role) as their new leader. James is an off-the-rails leader, always willing to jump into the middle of a conflict. He's aided by Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), who believe that their new leader is unnecessarily risky and over-confident.

James, seemingly psychotic yet still in complete control, leads the team through a series of adventures in the Iraq War. He's waiting to return home, but the longer he stays in the middle of the warfront, the less he wants to leave. For much like the opening quotation states, "War is a drug."

The story is based on the exploits of journalist Mark Boal, who covered bomb squads during the war. Bigelow became fascinated with the concept of what drives the bomb squads to jump into the middle of such an unknown fate. The two paired up to create The Hurt Locker, which explores the psyche of a particular bomb diffuser in the heat of the modern-day Iraq War, something that hadn't really been done by the movies before. Boal wrote the script, eventually winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

For the cast, Bigelow wanted relatively unknown actors to add an aura of unpredictability in the film. Jeremy Renner, a former waiter in Hollywood, was chosen for the lead role. He prepared for the part by spending weeks training at a real military institution. His first big acting break, Renner would go on to be nominated for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, as well as taking on bigger film roles in movies like The Town (nominated for Best Supporting Actor), The Avengers, and the upcoming Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunter. 

The Hurt Locker was shot outside of Jordan, making the scenery and production design extremely authentic. The film is known for long shoots, and exhausting production schedules in the heat of the desert. Chris Innis edited the movie, which creatively broke several conventions to achieve a heightened sense of realism. Frequent cuts, combined with bizarre camera angles, made the movie feel much more real, almost as if the viewer was immersed in the war-zone right along with the characters.

Though some veterans claimed the movie was highly inaccurate, critics were impressed by the intenseness of The Hurt Locker. They felt it was well shot, well acted, and just simply well done. It raked in numerous accolades, including the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), and the Director's Guild Award for Best Directing in a Motion Picture. Bigelow, Boal, and the movie were all nominated for Golden Globes. Which brings us to the one point of contention in The Hurt Locker's legacy.

In 2009, many were not expecting The Hurt Locker to win most of the awards. While award-darlings Up in the Air, Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire, and Inglourious Basterds were all in the competition, no one was expected to beat the visually-stunning, cinematically innovative Avatar. It raked in the highest box office receipt in history, was critically well received, and was nominated for nine Oscars. Avatar was seemingly unstoppable, winning the Golden Globe for Best Picture- Drama, and many thought it would take Oscar gold as well.

While Kathryn Bigelow's win is very impressive and important, James Cameron's work on Avatar is legendary. He completed changed the way we look at movies, and leads the battle for advances in computer animated and IMAX technologies. Avatar was something we've never seen before, forever affecting the cinematic landscape. The Hurt Locker is a necessary look at the United States military in Iraq.

Which begs the question: Who should have won?

Which movie truly is the best motion picture of 2009? Which one will we still be talking about in ten years? There's no way to tell, but it's pretty safe to say that Avatar will one day land on lists of the greatest films ever made. It's simply too important to ignore. But the fact remains that the Academy chose The Hurt Locker to represent the entire cinematic year of 2009. Sure, Avatar has a familiar story, and a predictable ending. By that logic, so did Star Wars. Both changed filmmaking for the future, and both should have been recognized for their work with a Best Picture win.

Bottom line: While I understand the importance of Bigelow's work and win, I cannot agree with the Academy's choice for Best Picture. It's certainly a close second; however, it was not the best film of 2009. I was very glad to see that Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director, and am immensely happy that she was the first woman to do so. Many other woman directors had failed to win before, and Bigelow's win is representative of all of their fine work in cinema.  I'm not saying that she was better than James Cameron for Avatar, but Bigelow certainly deserved the accolade.

Ironically, Bigelow has been considered to be one of the Best Director frontrunners of the year. Unfortunately, she did not receive a nomination for her work in Zero Dark Thirty, though the movie is up for Best Picture.

Only time will tell what the Best Picture of 2009 should have been. But as it stands right now, The Hurt Locker holds that achievement. And as far as the history books are concerned, that's the way it will stay.