Trailer
Plot summary
During the Iraq War, Bravo Company's bomb disposal unit is stationed in Baghdad with thirty-nine days left on its deployment. William James arrives as the team's new leader. Sergeant JT Sanborn works by the book, knows his duty and trusts his fellow soldiers to carry out theirs, while James would rather defuse a device by hand and does not tell the others what he intends to do. Specialist Owen Eldridge is unsure of himself and fears that one wrong move on his part will kill a civilian or a comrade. At every bomb site they must also watch the people gathered around, since some of them may be bombers.
Cast
- Nabil Konias Professor Nabil
Show all 20 cast
- Erin Gannas Mortuary Affairs Officer
- Kristoffer Ryan Wintersas Soldier at Intersection
- Feisal Sadounas Contractor Feisal
- Barrie Riceas Contractor Chris
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Hurt Locker (2008)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Jordanian government helped fund The Hurt Locker when its bond was nearly withdrawn after a line producer quit in the first three weeks of filming, which let Kathryn Bigelow cut the budget to $15 million. Jordan also used the production to found a film school and an internship program.
- Producer Nicolas Chartier emailed Academy Award voters urging them to pick The Hurt Locker over "a $500M film" (Avatar) for Best Picture. The Academy banned him from attending the ceremony, the first time it had ever banned an individual nominee.
- The production initially had Pentagon permission to film at Camp Arifjan, a real U.S. Army logistics base in Kuwait, but the clearance was withdrawn because military officials believed unapproved scenes were being shot. The film then used Royal Jordanian Army equipment.
- Because military props could not be imported, special effects artist Richard Stutsman used Chinese fireworks for gunpowder. Heat and friction set them off in his face as he assembled a prop, and he was back at work two days later.
- Jeremy Renner lost 15 lbs in three days to food poisoning while wearing an 80 lb bomb suit in the Jordanian heat, and twisted his ankle falling down stairs during a scene in which his character carries a dead Iraqi boy, delaying filming.
- Kathryn Bigelow deliberately cast relatively unknown actors and picked Jeremy Renner for bomb-disposal Sergeant William James, a composite of soldiers Mark Boal met while embedded, after seeing Renner's work in Dahmer, the film about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
- The Hurt Locker won six of its nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director.
- The film draws on freelance journalist Mark Boal's two weeks embedded with a U.S. Army bomb squad in Iraq in 2004; in 2005 he pitched it to Kathryn Bigelow as a film based on his Playboy article "The Man in the Bomb Suit."
