Nice, the trailer for the apparently thrilling Iraq war film, “The Hurt Locker,” is now online. It received major raves at the Toronto Film Festival and The Venice Film Festival in the later summer and fall of last year. Jeffrey Wells’ has called it an action film on par with the tense rush of James Cameron’s “Alien,” and the cast is stellar. Jeremy Renner is particularly under-appreciated and people are still waking up to the fact that Anthony Mackie is one of the greatest actors of his generation. Guy Pearce is rock-solid too.
Here’s what we wrote in our ’09 preview, which should give you all the details.
“The Hurt Locker” – Summit Entertainment- Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
Synopsis: An intense Iraq war drama that borders on action film, it focuses on an elite Army bomb squad unit defusing explosives in the middle of the chaos.
What You Need To Know: Already critically lauded at the ’08 Toronto Film Festival and awarded at the Venice Film Festival, the suspenseful and tension filled picture is already being touted as one of the greatest Iraq pictures ever made and a classic fit for the pantheon of all war films. The cast is stellar including the super underrated Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie, plus Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, Brian Geraghty, and Evangeline Lilly. Bigelow’s first film in 7 years, the only thing potentially stopping this film is Summit, who might release it in the summer instead of the awards season it clearly belongs in.
Release Date: Last rumored to be Summer 2009
Obviously Iraq war films have underwhelmed and underperformed at the box-office, but a lot of people think ‘Hurt Locker’ can break this trend.
From Hollywood Elsewhere’s review: The Hurt Locker is like having your heart operated on by a construction worker wielding a power pneumatic nail-driver. And the high-voltage stuff, which happens often, is, no joke, on the level of the armed creature-hunting and creature-evading sequences in Aliens, the classic 1986 thriller directed by Bigelow’s one-time-squeeze James Cameron.”
Here’s the Toronto Star’s rave: “Just when you think the battle of Iraq war dramas has been fought and lost, along comes one that demands to be seen — if you can handle the raging adrenaline. ‘The Hurt Locker’ strips the Iraqi conflict of politics and brings it right down to the garbage-strewn pavement, where lives are saved through skill and nerve but lost through bad luck and malevolence.”
