"The Hurt Locker" is a riveting, suspenseful portrait of the courage under fire of the military's unrecognized heroes: the technicians of a bomb squad who volunteer to challenge the odds and save lives doing one of the world's most dangerous jobs. Three members of the Army's elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) squad battle insurgents and one another as they search for and disarm a wave of roadside bombs on the streets of Baghdad—in order to try and make the city a safer place for Iraqis and Americans alike. Their mission is clear—protect and save—but it's anything but easy, as the margin of error when defusing a war-zone bomb is zero. This thrilling and heart-pounding look at the psychology of bomb technicians and the effects of risk and danger on the human psyche is a fictional tale inspired by real events by journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who was embedded with a special bomb unit in Iraq. In Iraq, it is soldier vernacular to speak of explosions as sending you to "the hurt locker."--©Official Site
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Reviews
The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"Kathryn Bigelow's blazingly powerful action movie The Hurt Locker, whose unpretentious clarity makes for a refreshing change."
28/08/2009
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"There will be other challengers in time, but so far The Hurt Locker is easily the best film to come out of the Iraq war."
28/08/2009
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The New York Times
A.O. Scott
"If “The Hurt Locker” is not the best action movie of the summer, I’ll blow up my car. 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... You may emerge from “The Hurt Locker” shaken, exhilarated and drained, but you will also be thinking."
26/07/2009
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The Times
Kevin Maher
"For, in short, in its gutsy, bare-bones beauty, The Hurt Locker is not simply a war movie. It is war poetry."
28/08/2009
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The Mirror
Mark Adams
"This mustsee movie is dazzlingly well made, carefully showing how a bomb disposal unit goes through its harrowingly tense work and how the personalities deal with the emotions and rigours involved."
23/08/2009
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The New Yorker
David Denby
"Kathryn Bigelow’s movie is set in Baghdad in 2004, and it brings us, from its particular angle, closer to the dangers of the war than any other movie about this conflict."
06/07/2009
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Time Out
Dave Calhoun
"Bigelow is more interested in psychology than politics, but she shows just enough awareness of how the behaviour of soliders can fuel retaliation and even includes one direct suggestion that the US Army can and does choose to disregard the welfare of civilians. Most encouragingly, the film offers a fine distinction between heroism and heroics."
26/08/2009
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The Sunday Times
Cosmo Landesman
"It’s said The Hurt Locker is the best film on Iraq to appear so far; however, I don’t think it’s an Iraq war film. You could have made the same movie in Afghanistan or any Middle Eastern arena where bomb units operate. This is because Bigelow has eschewed any political or historical context. Her soldiers never ask: “Why are we here? Why are the insurgents planting these bombs?” And neither does Bigelow."
30/08/2009
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The Observer
Philip French
"I can't think of a recent film, not even Oliver Stone's Platoon, that has conveyed so vividly what it is to be a soldier today on a front line where there is no defined border, just a dangerous no-man's-land."
30/08/2009
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
"Disorientating us without destroying the rhythm of a shot or obscuring what's going on, her docu-drama realism complements her cinematically staged action sequences, giving the whole film an exhilarating but believable edge. It's impressive stuff, intensely thrilling film-making with a pulse and a brain."
28/08/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Sukhdev Sandhu
"Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose track record includes Point Break (1991) and Strange Days (1995), it’s a super-sharp, nerve-shredding thriller that reveals more about the realities of contemporary military conflict than most documentaries, is as fissile and explosive as a Transformers movie, and delivers a powerful and often haunting critique of American society both at home and as its faultlines are expressed abroad."
28/08/2009
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Channel 4 Film
Anton Bitel
"Shot up close and personal and brilliantly edited, The Hurt Locker captures the paranoia, grit and confusion of urban warfare so grippingly that it takes a while for the film's moral disorientation to catch up - but when it does, the film becomes, not unlike Sam Mendes's Jarhead (2005), a war movie concerned less with 'war is hell' cliches than with the psychological make-up of those who can thrive in such an infernal environment."
07/10/2009
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
"Every day is a new invitation to die. With structural daring, Bigelow (who made Point Break and Strange Days) and screenwriter Mark Boal (a former embedded Iraq reporter who co-wrote In the Valley of Elah) place two extended, nerve-racking bomb-defusal sequences in succession right at the beginning. Take a spare set of fingernails."
26/08/2009
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
"The superb set-pieces keep you on the very edge of your seat, if not under it, but there's almost nothing between those set-pieces: no narrative, no wider commentary on the Iraq war or its participants..."
30/08/2009
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Variety
Derek Elley
"War may be hell, but watching war movies can also be hell, especially when they don't get to the point. Often gripping at a straight thriller level, but increasingly weakened by its fuzzy (and hardly original) psychology, Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker," centered on an elite U.S. bomb squad in Baghdad, doesn't bring anything new to the table of grunts-in-the-firing-line movies. "
04/09/2008
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