The Hurt Locker opens with a robot that cannot finish the job. A wagon carrying the trigger charge breaks, and Sergeant Matt Thompson walks the charge to the IED by hand. An Iraqi insurgent uses a cell phone to detonate the IED. Thompson is killed. That is the opening sequence of Kathryn Bigelow’s 2008 war film, and it sets the terms for everything that follows: the machines fail, the men step forward, and the distance between a bomb and a body is measured in seconds.
Trailer, via The Dollar Theater.
Jeremy Renner Takes Over From Guy Pearce
Guy Pearce plays Sergeant Matt Thompson, and he is gone before the title card settles. Jeremy Renner arrives as Staff Sergeant William James, the new team leader, and immediately breaks the rhythm his squad had. Anthony Mackie is Sergeant JT Sanborn. Brian Geraghty is Specialist Owen Eldridge, who carries the guilt of the opening scene — he had the man with the phone in his sights and did not fire.
James does not clear his plans with Sanborn. He pops smoke grenades to block Sanborn’s view and walks into an IED’s blast radius, defusing it moments before an insurgent tries to set it off with a 9-volt battery. On a car bomb that runs long, Sanborn protests. James takes off his headset and flips him off.
Boal wrote the screenplay from his time embedded with a bomb squad, and the film never pretends James is a model soldier.
Fort Irwin, Jordan, and a Week of C4
Bigelow made a point of casting relatively unknown actors. “It underscored the tension because with the lack of familiarity also comes a sense of unpredictability,” she said. Renner’s James is a composite, built from people Boal met while embedded. Bigelow cast Renner based on his work in Dahmer.
The cast spent a week living and training at Fort Irwin, a United States Army reservation in the Mojave Desert in California, learning to handle C4, render safe improvised explosive devices, and wear a bomb suit. Then they shot in Jordan in the summer. Mackie said: “It was so desperately hot, and we were so easily agitated. But that movie was like doing a play. We really looked out for each other, and it was a great experience. It made me believe in film.”
Bigelow cast refugees who had theatrical backgrounds. Suhail Dabbach plays the innocent man used as a suicide bomber at the film’s end.
A Running Order of the Set Pieces
| Sequence | Location | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | City street | Thompson is killed; Eldridge freezes |
| First James defusal | IED site | Smoke grenades, 9-volt battery |
| Car bomb | City street | James flips off Sanborn |
| Desert convoy | Outside base | Five armed men turn out to be British contractors |
| Sniper fight | Desert | Three contractors killed; James and Sanborn counter-snipe |
| Warehouse raid | City street | James finds a body bomb he thinks is Beckham |
| Evacuation | Warehouse | Colonel John Cambridge is killed |
Ralph Fiennes shows up as Contractor Team Leader and does not last. The film kills its recognizable faces fast.
Sanborn and Eldridge Outside Base
Sanborn and Eldridge blow unused ordnance outside base, and Sanborn openly suggests they frag James. Then there is Beckham, the Iraqi boy who sells DVDs and plays soccer outside the base. James finds a body bomb in the warehouse he believes is the boy. The film does not confirm it for him, and it does not confirm it for us. Christian Camargo’s Colonel John Cambridge dies in the evacuation.
What the Film Gets Right and What Veterans Reject
The Hurt Locker premiered at the 2008 Venice International Film Festival. Summit Entertainment released it in the United States on June 26, 2009. It grossed $50 million worldwide and received acclaim from critics, who praised the acting and cinematography. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won six, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. It became the first film directed by a woman to win Best Picture.
Not everyone signed on. Iraq War veterans have called the film “absurd” and “nonsensical.” That criticism is aimed at the film’s central dramatic device, not at its craft.
Why The Hurt Locker Still Sets the Bar
The Hurt Locker is considered one of the most influential war films of the 2000s and the 21st century. In 2020, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
That reputation holds up. The film’s tagline — “You don’t have to be a hero to do this job. But it helps.” — is a marketing line, and the film is smarter than it. The veterans who call it absurd are arguing about a film that was never trying to be a manual. The people who call it the best war film of its decade are arguing about a film that earns that with dust, silence, and a man walking toward something everyone else has the sense to run from.
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