‘The Hurt Locker,’ the only great movie about the Iraq War, turns 15

Sacrificing politics for in-your-face realism, Kathryn Bigelow’s 2009 film went all in on the “war is a drug” metaphor

As the Iraq War dragged on throughout the Aughts, Hollywood struggled mightily with making movies about it. The early ones tended not to be good, and people did not want to see them. 

But then, in June of 2009 — 15 years ago this month — director Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker arrived. It was the first great movie about that war and the only one to date. The film was nearly universally critically acclaimed and won six Oscars- but even then, The Hurt Locker underperformed at the box office. (Ironically, one of the earlier, less successful Iraq films, In the Valley of Elah, was co-written by the same screenwriter, Mark Boal; that movie’s conclusion, of a man hanging an American flag upside down, has been in the news recently.) 

The Hurt Locker was not about the politics of the war, although it came about at a time when the public had turned pretty decisively against the Iraqi military adventure. The movie is far removed from politics, and whether the war was justified is not a subject. This is a fair criticism, although it applies to most great movies about the Vietnam War.