Why The Hurt Locker Won the Oscar!

by Karen Harper

Sunday night’s Oscar win by Kathryn Bigelow, the first time a woman has won for Best Director in the long history of the Awards program, is being touted as a historic step forward for women.

Bigelow won not only Best Director, but her movie The Hurt Locker won Best Movie, beating out among others the close favorite Avatar. Both of these movies focus in different ways on the issues of war and Imperialism. Of the two movies the more obviously traditional choice of Avatar, an epic blockbuster directed by a man, is actually the more progressive choice. Despite being directed by a woman, the Hurt Locker is ultimately a superficial presentation of a macho war hero archetype that is not too different from an old John Wayne style movie.

Having just watched the Hurt Locker the night after it won the Oscar, my partner and I expected more from this movie in terms of an exploration of soldiers, the trauma they go through and how it shapes them and scars them. Instead the movie is ultimately a defense of a certain style of soldiering which is individualistic, unpredictable and dangerous to comrades.

Sgt William James portrayed by Jeremy Renner is reckless, going in to defuse bombs without taking appropriate safety precautions. We have already been shown his predecessor who died trying to defuse a roadside bomb even while taking extreme precautions. We know that the job can kill even the careful, and then we are presented with Sgt. James who instead of sending in the robot, suits up in his body armor and struts in cowboy-style to defuse the bomb. A superior officer pumps his hand afterward asking how many bombs he’s defused and making a big fuss of his record and what a hero he is. We initially see this attitude as a little ridiculous but then realize through the course of the movie that the director is actually going to support this concept in the end.

James’ comrades Sgt. Sanborn and Spc Eldrigde have to deal with his individualism. The former considers killing him to rid their team of the liability, and the latter reproaches him after being shot due to James’ recklessness. We sympathize with his poor workmates from the beginning but ultimately we are let down by the movie when Sanborn breaks down after an extremely stressful failed defusing and ask James how he does it, as if Sgt. James' reckless individualism is an example to other soldiers.

We also see James make the choice to re-enlist and turn away from his partner and infant son. He walks back into the base in Iraq to a background of rock music with a satisfied expression on his face. Never do we get any exploration of where he came from, why he needs a dangerous adrenaline rush to feel worthwhile or why he has to run away from intimate relationships. We know there are many people like him, but the movie in no way helps us understand why.

This is not an anti-war movie either. The Iraqis are anonymous people with guns who can’t be trusted but certainly can’t be understood either. There is no context or history of the conflict presented. No mention of the oil, no mention of Saddam Hussein or a decade long embargo, no signs of the private military contractors and other companies trying to expand into a decimated Iraq. Tellingly as well, never is a US soldier shown killing an obvious civilian. Every one of their victims is carrying a gun and trying to shoot them. The only civilian casualties are from roadside bombs, or the insurgents themselves, as if the Iraqis were always killing each other and the US role had no influence on this.

Ultimately, this movie is a let down to those with hopes for some insights. All we are left with is a superficial presentation of the Iraq war, a mentally unstable though ultimately effective soldier, and his more cautious (thus in the movie's eyes weaker) colleagues. I suppose if a woman was going to win an Oscar for best director, this was going to be the movie.