By keeping its scale miniature instead of epic (there are no combat scenes in the traditional sense), The Hurt Locker keeps its audience in a...
Independent August 29, 2009 There will be other challengers in time, but so far The Hurt Locker is easily the best film to come out of the Iraq war.
There is something original and distinctive about the film’s willingness to admit that for some men (and many moviegoers) war carries an intr...
Rolling Stone June 25, 2009 Here’s the Iraq War movie for those who don’t like Iraq War movies.
A blazingly powerful action movie… whose unpretentious clarity makes for a refreshing change.
New York Times June 25, 2009 If The Hurt Locker is not the best action movie of the summer, I’ll blow up my car.
The Hurt Locker leaves an impression. It practically leaves a bruise.
Reverse Shot February 16, 2016 More than anything, The Hurt Locker is a high-wire study of men at work, its lack of overt politics replaced by a revelatory central perf...
Village Voice June 24, 2009 Instead of setting out to prove a point, it seeks to immerse us in an environment – something Bigelow does with a conceptual rigor u...
Kathryn Bigelow’s new motion picture The Hurt Locker is everything you’ve heard and more.
Variety September 4, 2008 Often gripping at a straight thriller level, but increasingly weakened by its fuzzy psychology, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker doesn...
New York Post June 26, 2009 Despite its pumped-up admiration for our troops and some scenes that spurt adrenaline like a fire hose, this sort-of-thriller about a bomb squ...
This electrifying thriller about a US Army bomb disposal squad working in Baghdad isn’t just one of the best films of 2009. It is the fi...
Overwhelmingly tense, overflowing with crackling verisimilitude, it’s both the film about the war in Iraq that we’ve been waiting for a...
Like all the best war movies – no matter what war, what era – The Hurt Locker goes to the core of human nature.
blogs.smh.com.au February 17, 2010 Succeeds where so many others have failed, by crafting a compelling Iraq war film.
Globe and Mail June 25, 2009 There is something powerfully convincing about Bigelow’s way of placing the viewer in a situation where death is unpredictable, can come...
Her new film, The Hurt Locker, is both a structuralist war movie-it could be titled 'Seven Instances of Dismantling an Improvised Explosive Device...
The hybridization of arthouse and action doesn’t happen all that often, but it should, if mashing the two genres makes for film as riveting a...
Bigelow’s direction is confident – the action sequences are tense and suspenseful, so much so that The Hurt Locker also works as a...
Irish Times June 26, 2009 The first great film about the war in Iraq.
Toronto Star July 10, 2009 Just when you thought the battle of Iraq war dramas had been fought and lost, along comes one that demands to be seen – if you can handle the...
We’ve had good and very good Iraq movies for several years now, but The Hurt Locker has a fullness of understanding that sets it apart.
ieweekly.com June 25, 2009 Our American love for mavericks is bound to get tied in knots watching James' cavalier approach to everyone’s death. He’s a hero and&nb...
In the end, Bigelow’s point of view is what’s most interesting about The Hurt Locker. The picture’s strength lies in the details...
Like her protagonist, Bigelow is both a meticulous technician and a ballsy showoff. And, like him, she has ice water in her veins.
The kind of uncompromising movie that any politician who claims to support the troops while extending the war and cutting funds for veterans' benef...
Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow have made a unique film about war.
For the first hour or more, The Hurt Locker boldly forsakes any conventional narrative hook beyond the ongoing tensions between these men and the t...
… a super-smart actioner about men in war that’s arguably the best American film of the year.
Empire Magazine August 29, 2009 The most literally exciting film you will see this year. Forget the off-putting banner of another Iraq movie – go, watch, marvel, endure and b...
Departing from archetypes set by WWII and Vietnam movies, Bigelow’s tough-as-nails film develops its own signature. It’s not a mes...
Filmmaking simply doesn’t get much more riveting than Kathryn Bigelow’s incredible The Hurt Locker, a cinematic experience unlike any o...
This beyond-the-headlines war movie, a 'ticking clock' thriller from journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal, is the first Iraq War movie to quali...
Offers a fresh take on the war and the men in it.
The director, Kathryn Bigelow, shot with four lightweight cameras, and the imagery is rarely still. The jitteriness is appropriate for a world...
Director Kathryn Bigelow, doing her run-'n'-gun best, doesn’t mine traditional suspense so much as impart a queasy feeling of monotony.
Slant Magazine June 22, 2009 A coolly elegant kineticist, Kathryn Bigelow specializes in impressionistic phallus jostles.
Daily Telegraph August 29, 2009 A super-sharp, nerve-shredding thriller that reveals more about the realities of contemporary military conflict than most documentaries.
When it comes to getting an audience’s attention, there’s nothing quite like blowing up a major star within the first five minutes of&n...
Finally, Hollywood has made a great film about the Iraq War.
Financial Times August 29, 2009 The film sweats out its truth from its central character.
Bigelow crowns several decades of excellent artistic enquiry with a film that everybody should see.
There is much that is fiercely modest about its ambitions. And, for a war film, it is often disconcertingly quiet.
The Atlantic January 17, 2018 The Hurt Locker is without a doubt one of the best war pictures I have ever seen, and I have seen most of them.
Reel Talk Online September 12, 2017 I probably should have seen this movie when I had the chance in theaters, but as a DVD it didn’t live up to the hype, though it was...
Globe and Mail October 18, 2008 Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd crank up the tension to nail-biting, gut-churning extremes and the mayhem is powerfully visceral.
The Hurt Locker might be the first Iraq-set film to break through to a mass audience because it doesn’t lead with the paralysis of the g...
The Hurt Locker is a spellbinding war film by Kathryn Bigelow, a master of stories about men and women who choose to be in physical danger.
Times (UK) August 29, 2009 For, in short, in its gutsy, bare-bones beauty, The Hurt Locker is not simply a war movie. It is war poetry.
Chicago Reader July 10, 2009 It’s the best war movie since Full Metal Jacket.
Bigelow’s film combines an expert management of tension with a sensitive and journalistic attention to detail: she has one eye on the tr...
More than any recent movie, this has a 'you are there' feel to it that gives us a flavor of an Iraq we don’t see on the nightly newscasts.