166 HURT LOCKER, THE
when an IED explodes. Eldridge takes on the blame for this loss. James is then
ordered to take care of a gas tanker denotation and decides to look for the respon-
sible party, assuming that they are still close at hand. Sanborn objects, but when
James leaves, he and Eldridge reluctantly follow. Iraqi insurgents end up catching
Eldridge and taking him prisoner, but James and Sanborn save his life. The next
day, Beckham walks up to James, seemingly alive, and passes by silently. Eldridge
blames James for his wounds. Sanborn and James’ team is commanded forth on
another mission, right at the final two days of their rotation. They arrive as instructed
to find a peaceful, Iraqi civilian with a suicide bomb taped to his chest. James
attempts to remove the bomb, but the man’s vest has too many locks and, with
time running out, James is forced to abandon the man to certain death. The bomb
detonates. Distraught by the man’s death, Sanborn tells James that he wants to go
home. After Bravo Com pany’s rotation ends, James returns home to his ex- wife
Connie (Evangeline Lilly) and their infant son (they still live with him) but James
quickly tires of suburban life. One night, James tells his small child that there is
only a single thing that he can be sure that he loves. Soon after, James begins a
new tour with a 365- day rotation.Reception
The Hurt Locker was first screened at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September 2008.
The movie was then shown at 10 other American and international film festivals
over the next 10 months before its domestic wide release on 26 June 2009. The
Hurt Locker proved to be a solid box office hit, earning $17 million in North Amer i ca
and another $32.2 million in foreign markets, for a total gross of $49.2 million—
more than four times its production bud get. The movie also won a slew of awards,
including nine Acad emy Award nominations and six Oscars: for Best Picture
(Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, and Greg Shapiro); Best Director
(Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win an Oscar in this category); Best Writing,
Original Screenplay (Mark Boal); Best Editing (Bob Murawski and Chris Innis);
Best Sound Mixing (Paul N. J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett); and Best Sound Editing
(Paul N. J. Ottosson). Not surprisingly, reviews were almost universally adulatory.
Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and wrote, “The Hurt Locker is a great film,
an intelligent film, a film shot clearly so that we know exactly who every body is and
where they are and what they’re doing and why. The camera work is at the ser vice
of the story. Bigelow knows that you can’t build suspense with shots lasting one or
two seconds. And you can’t tell a story that way, either— not one that deals with
the mystery of why a man like James seems to depend on risking his life” (Ebert,
8 July 2009). Mick LaSalle wrote, “The Hurt Locker has a fullness of understanding
that sets it apart. On the day of its release, this one enters the pantheon of great
American war films— and puts Kathryn Bigelow into the top tier of American
directors” (LaSalle, 2009). Whereas the vast majority of film critics hailed the
movie’s technical virtuosity and lauded its apo liti cal emphasis on the soldier’s- eye
view of the Iraq War, a few critics on the Left found these tendencies ideologically
suspect. In her review, Tara McElvey noted that “The Hurt Locker sets itself up as an
anti- war film” but really functions as pro- war propaganda because it makes war