'Hurt Locker' Creators On Explosive New Thriller
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal collaborated on The Hurt Locker, a thriller about an Army bomb squad in Iraq. Franco Origlia/Getty Images hide caption
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal collaborated on The Hurt Locker, a thriller about an Army bomb squad in Iraq.
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Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow join Fresh Air to discuss their collaboration on The Hurt Locker, a combat movie about an Army bomb squad that roams Iraq in search of explosives to defuse.
The film — which won four awards at the 2008 Venice Film Festival — stars Jeremy Renner as a cowboy-ish leader addicted to the adrenaline rush of war. In his summer movie preview, NPR's Bob Mondello called The Hurt Locker "the first smart war movie in quite a while to have a leading role that could've been played by John Wayne."
Boal researched the film by embedding with a real bomb squad in Iraq. The Hurt Locker is his first screenplay; previously Boal wrote the short story that inspired the movie In the Valley of Elah, about a young Iraq War veteran who is discovered brutally murdered in New Mexico.
Bigelow's directorial credits include Point Break, Blue Steel and K-19: The Widowmaker. She has also directed episodes of the TV shows Homicide: Life on the Street and Wild Palms.