The New Big Movie on the Block

In a battle for best movie, The Hurt locker blew past Avatar.

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March 17, 2010 • written by Ellen Beaucoudray  
Filed under featured, top story

On December 18, 2009, a film that rivaled Titanic hit theaters all over the world. Avatar was a global phenomenon, ranking in 150 million dollars in gross revenue in it’s first weekend in theaters. Avatar had great success, but will now have to renounce it’s number one spot to an unsuspecting film.

A movie about the bloody Iraq war, The Hurt Locker, portrays one soldier’s journey through the terror and tragedies of the battlefield. Sergeant First Class William James has to cope with being bumped to team leader after the death of his commanding officer, and witnesses the gruesome sight of seeing a body strapped with an undetonated bomb. James decides he cannot handle war anymore, and returns home to his wife and child. However, James realizes that there is “one thing” that he knows and loves: a life that lets him defend his country and family.  He is then seen back in Iraq, ready to serve another year.

At this year’s Academy Awards, many thought Avatar, which held the top spot for movies, would come out with another first place victory. It  was an unexpected turn of events when The Hurt Locker came out ahead of Avatar.  The film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, made history, becoming the only woman to win a directing Oscar in the 82 years of the Academy Awards.

The Hurt Locker lets viewers experience first hand the terror and horror of what it is like to live in a sun-baked battleground where everything could, literally, blow up in a soldiers  face at any moment. It displays in great detail and depth the truth of the war, and the horrific scenes that military men and women see every day, in a desert wasteland far away from their home and loved ones. “The real, emotion behind it is phenomenal,” some critics say. Avatar adopted advanced 3D technology which attracted millions of viewers, but The Hurt Locker has its own unique way to show the Iraq war in the biggest spotlight. In the battle of fiction vs. nonfiction, the truth and reality of the Iraq war prevails over the mythical world of Pandora.