An Unusual War Movie, and One of the Best Ever Made
Essentially a character-driven drama, The Hurt Locker (2008) nevertheless has plenty of shootouts and explosions. But the emphasis is not so much on action as on suspense and tension. The story takes place during the Iraq War, but the film doesn't address the issue of whether or not the war can be justified. Instead, the focus is on the day-to-day lives of three American soldiers sent to Iraq to do a specific job. The three are portrayed by little-known actors who give fine performances. The movie is fictional, but the filmmakers' naturalistic style and attention to detail create a feeling of authenticity.
The story is set in Baghdad in 2004. The US has invaded Iraq, toppled the Saddam Hussein regime and put a large occupation force in place. But there is an extensive Iraqi insurgency that continually harasses the Americans and their allies with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), car bombs, suicide bombers, etc. Caught up in this situation are three US Army enlisted men who constitute a bomb squad assigned the harrowing task of dealing with the explosives used by the insurgents.
A typical outing for the bomb squad involves going through nerve-wracking procedures to disarm an explosive while surrounded by a bunch of Iraqis. Most are just curious, but occasionally a sniper pops up, and the bomb squad must always be wary of anyone with a cellphone — he's probably about to use it to detonate the explosive. The members of the bomb squad are constantly aware that if they make a single wrong decision, they'll likely end up dead.
An Excellent Audio Commentary and an Additional Pair of Extras
The DVD has a 12-minute making-of titled "The Hurt Locker: Behind the Scenes." It gives you an opportunity to see director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, and to hear the three principal actors — Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty — talk about their characters.
The "Image Gallery" is a 23-minute slide show of behind-the-scenes stills, and you can optionally hear over it the audio from an interesting Q & A session that Bigelow and Boal gave at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. Among other topics, they talk about shooting on location in Amman, Jordan, which stood in for Baghdad in the movie. Bigelow says there were 750,000 Iraqi refugees in Amman, providing the filmmakers with an ample supply of extras for crowd scenes, as well as experienced actors to play small roles.
If you liked the feature film, don't fail to listen to the audio commentary track, on which Bigelow and Boal speak approximately an equal amount of time. Boal developed the script from his experience as a journalist embedded with an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team in Iraq, and he knows a lot about the movie's subject matter. Bigelow's strength is in discussing the filmmaking, and she tells of shooting in Super 16 using four cameras for every take of every scene, which produced about 200 feet of film for every foot seen in the movie's final cut.
DVD Details
Below I have listed all the details for the DVD containing The Hurt Locker.
Release Date: January 12, 2010
Feature Film Runtime: 2 hours 10 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for War Violence and Language
Aspect Ratio 1.78:1, Color
English 5.1 Dolby Digital
English 2.0 Dolby Surround
Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital
English Captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Spanish Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Director and Screenwriter
The Hurt Locker: Behind the Scenes (12 1/2 min.)
Image Gallery With Optional Q & A Audio (23 min.)
