DVD Netflix's most popular movie of 2008 was The Hurt Locker. The film was also the surprise Best Picture winner of its release year, as well as Best Adapted Screenplay winner.
This film provides an unflinching look at the psychological impact that the stress of war takes on a group of U.S. soldiers who defuse landmines and bombs in Iraq.
They are targets of the insurgents. The nerve-wracking work they do and the looming sense that any of them could die at any moment has rarely been portrayed in a more honest way. We see war as raw and emotional.
Jeremy Renner is particularly outstanding with his performance. Kathryn Bigelow, who also directed Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and was the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director with The Hurt Locker.