Sumith Prasad
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a war film that centers around an Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, deployed in Iraq during the Iraq War. The film primarily follows Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), who becomes the team’s leader when his predecessor got killed by an improvised explosive device in Baghdad. The Bigelow-directorial progresses through the psychological turmoil the team members suffer while putting their lives on the line of duty. The thriller offers an authentic exploration of the Iraq War, making one intrigued about the real-life connections of the same. On that note, let us share what we know!
Is The Hurt Locker a True Story?
‘The Hurt Locker’ is partially based on a true story. The film is based on screenwriter Mark Boal’s first-hand experiences while he was working as a journalist in Iraq during the Iraq War. He was embedded with a bomb squad at the end of 2004 and accompanied the squad during daily missions. Boal’s experience became the foundation of the screenplay he conceived for the film. “The idea is that it’s the first movie about the Iraq War that purports to show the experience of the soldiers. We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can’t see on CNN,” Boal told THR about the foundation of the film.
Boal used fictionalized characters but tried to offer an authentic depiction of what Explosive Ordnance Disposal does during wars within the narrative limits of the cinematic medium. “[…] the situations [in the film] are pretty authentic to what within the parameters of it being a movie. Let me add that. It’s not a documentary. So there are definitely some movie liberties that are taken in order to tell a story in a compressed heartfelt way,” Boal told Collider. Still, Boal didn’t deviate much from the reality of the war. “I wanted to be as realistic as possible and shine a light on the war,” he told Vulture.
Kathryn Bigelow, the director of the film, also wanted to portray the psychological dimension of real-life soldiers in the film. “I think it’s an opportunity to look at the individual in a very difficult situation. And to look at these men who have arguably the most dangerous job in the world, but do it voluntarily, and to begin to unpack that psychology and perhaps make the conflict less abstract,” Bigelow told Guardian. “The film is looking at the experience of the soldier and trying to put you into those boots – that lonely walk towards what the rest of the world is running from,” the director added regarding the film’s authenticity.
Bigelow and Boal wanted to shed light on the reality of bomb squads and soldiers working in such units. The lack of attention they received further motivated them to bring their story as a film. “These men are sort of the unsung heroes—they’re highly underappreciated. What they do is key to this particular conflict, and I think it’s an element of the military that the public knows fairly little about,” Bigelow told Marie Claire. “I wanted to identify the price of their heroism—there is a cost to the courage. The job comes with a tremendous sense of purpose, but it almost ruins these guys for normal life,” she added.
Even though Boal had made it clear that he didn’t conceive his screenplay based on any particular individual’s life, he was legally challenged for conceiving the protagonist William James based on a real soldier. In 2010, U.S. Army bomb disposal expert Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver filed a lawsuit against the film claiming that the character William James is almost entirely based on him. However, Jeffrey Sarver eventually lost the lawsuit.
‘The Hurt Locker’ offers a perfect combination of reality and fiction to cinematically portray the real-life experiences of American soldiers who had risked their lives in a foreign country. Bigelow and Boal’s creation depicts the heroic saga of those individuals, using fictitious characters, to display their dedication and resilience.
Read More: Best War Movies
