Raise your hand if you've ever been in 'the hurt locker'

Last Saturday, I mentioned in this space that I was planning to watch all of the movies that have won Academy Awards for Best Picture, and I finally got started on this project a couple of days ago.

I’m watching the winners in reverse order, that is, starting with the most recent winner and working my way backwards. With this in mind, I started this week with the 2009 Best Picture Winner, “The Hurt Locker.”

For those of you who haven’t seen this excellent movie, it’s about an elite U.S. Army explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) unit in Iraq. This movie is action packed and will leave you on the edge of you seat. It’s so good, that Academy voters selected it for Best Picture over such blockbusters as “Avatar,” “The Blind Side,” “District 9” and “Inglorious Basterds.”

This movie was directed by James Cameron’s ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, which makes this the first Best Picture movie to be directed by a woman. (Bigelow also received the Academy’s Best Director Award in 2009, beating out her ex-husband, Cameron, who directed “Avatar.”)

“The Hurt Locker” stars Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, Evangeline Lilly, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse and Guy Pearce.

Released on June 26, 2009, this movie posted gross revenues of $48.6 million against a shooting budget of $15 million. The movie was shot in Jordan, which shares a border with Iraq (and is also probably the most Westernized country in the Middle East).

The movie was written by Mark Boal, a freelance journalist who spent two weeks with a U.S. ordinance disposal unit in Iraq in 2004. A number of his feature stories have appeared in Playboy magazine, and the movie is a fictionalized version of some of the things he saw and experienced while in Iraq.

A few people may be wondering about this movie’s title and what it means. The slang phrase, “the hurt locker,” is a decades-old military expression that likely dates back to the Vietnam War. It has a lot of different meanings, including a situation that involves extreme pain, big trouble, a huge disadvantage or just being in all around bad shape. For example, if that hummer runs over you, you’re going to end up in the hurt locker.

In addition to winning an Academy Award for Best Picture, it also won Best Film honors at the British Academy Film Awards. It was also nominated for three Golden Globe Awards.

In the end, I enjoyed this movie and would recommend it to anyone in the audience who hasn’t seen it before. How many of you have had a chance to see this movie? What did you think about it? Let us know in the comments section below.

From here, it’s on to the 2008 Best Picture winner, “Slumdog Millionaire.” Rounding out the rest of the 2000-decade winners are “No Country for Old Men,” “The Departed,” “Crash,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,” “Chicago,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “Gladiator.”