The Hurt Locker

THE HURT LOCKER

Up For:
Best Motion Picture of the Year
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Best Achievement in Directing
Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
Best Achievement in Cinematography
Best Achievement in Editing
Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score
Best Achievement in Sound Mixing
Best Achievement in Sound Editing

In the lead for nominations, (along with Avatar... blah), Hurt Locker is the most underrated film of the year.

When in the theater, I heard absolutely nothing about the film. One older couple that came into the video store told me they walked out of the film because it was so horrible. Not such a great review to hear from the film's first weeks.

Not even sure what it was, who was in it, or what I would get from viewing it (this was before I started working my way through the nominees), I was hugely surprised by the outcome. The film is overall well done. Those nine nominations were not easily give. Hurt Locker worked its ass off for those noms.

With 33 films to watch (6 to watch in the Best Picture category at the time of viewing Hurt Locker), I believe that this is the closest film I have seen to take the Best Picture category.

Kathryn Bigelow could easily take home the Best Director Oscar, and I really hope she does (and not just because she is James Cameron's ex-wife... take that Cameron, haha). Not only a great image of a woman director winning the highest honor of directors, but because she ultimately deserves it.

Hurt Locker mixes powerful situations with deep, complex emotion and makes you work through this film with the characters. Ever disarmed a bomb in real life? You will feel like you are the one disarming the bombs in this one. The handling of the situations in the film is very original. It felt less like a war film and more like six or seven different segments of how to disarm a bomb, but in a cinematic way and not an instruction video way.

Jeremy Renner was great. (After viewing this film, without seeing several big contenders, Jeremy Renner had his Oscar in the bag). He had such a character to play with and it came out great in the end. You are gunning for him to succeed in moments of stress, and want to slap him for his arrogance in other scenes, which supplies a broad spectrum that you expect from an Oscar-worthy performance.

Hurt Locker is going to be in my top two for winning the Best Picture category, even after being through most of the Best Pic noms. If I had my choice, it would win.

Oscars aside, this film went up with Moon and The Road as films that will stand the test of time coming out of 2009. If Hurt Locker would not have been nominated for anything, I would find that odd, and would have been less likely to embark on the Oscar journey that came from viewing it.

(33 FILMS TO GO)