48 Fun Facts About The Hurt Locker

In which city is The Hurt Locker's bomb squad stationed in 2004?

Baghdad. To make its streets convincing, Bigelow filled every Iraqi role, down to the extras, with Iraqis who had fled the war, many of them trained actors.

Who plays William James, the bomb technician at the centre of The Hurt Locker?

Jeremy Renner. Bigelow insisted on little-known leads, reasoning that with unfamiliar faces the audience could never be sure which of the three would survive.

In The Hurt Locker's desert sniper duel, what on the ammunition keeps jamming the rifle?

Blood. The spare rounds come off one of the dead men, so James talks a panicking Eldridge through cleaning each one: 'Spit and rub.'

How is team leader Thompson killed in The Hurt Locker's opening sequence?

A phone-triggered bomb. Thompson only walks down in the bomb suit because the robot's cart breaks, and an onlooker sets off the blast with a cell phone as he heads back.

Who plays Thompson, the bomb-squad leader killed in The Hurt Locker's opening minutes?

Guy Pearce. Bigelow put a few famous faces in parts that end abruptly, breaking the rule that a star survives to the last reel, so that nobody on screen feels safe.

Who plays Sergeant J. T. Sanborn, the cautious teammate, in The Hurt Locker?

Anthony Mackie. He said the summer heat on location could not be faked and left the cast easily agitated, yet they looked out for each other 'like doing a play'.

What does James do when Sanborn urges him to quit the car bomb in The Hurt Locker?

Pulls off his radio headset. Sanborn is so shaken that he later talks with Eldridge about killing James in a staged detonator 'accident'.

How does James screen himself from view as he walks to his first IED in The Hurt Locker?

With smoke grenades. The cloud may hide him from snipers, but it also blinds Sanborn and Eldridge, who can no longer protect him.

In The Hurt Locker, the armed men beside the SUV with a flat tyre turn out to be what?

British private military contractors. Hidden snipers kill three of them within minutes, leaving James and Sanborn to take over the long duel across the desert.

What is the trade of Beckham, the Iraqi boy James befriends, in The Hurt Locker?

Selling DVDs. When James finds a boy's body rigged with a bomb he takes it for Beckham, a mistake that sends him off base at gunpoint to hunt the killers.

Who is killed by a bomb outside the warehouse in The Hurt Locker?

Cambridge, the camp doctor. He had been counselling the anxious Eldridge, so his death on what looked like a routine call-out leaves the young soldier more shaken than ever.

Where does James end up when he forces a merchant to drive him to Beckham's home in The Hurt Locker?

A professor's house. The startled owner politely takes him for a CIA man, his wife drives James out, and the next day Beckham turns up alive.

How is Eldridge wounded during the night hunt for insurgents in The Hurt Locker?

Shot in the leg. James had insisted on chasing the bombers into the dark over Sanborn's protests, and Eldridge blames that appetite for danger as he is flown out.

Who plays Specialist Owen Eldridge, the youngest of the trio in The Hurt Locker?

Brian Geraghty. His jittery Eldridge, who fears his team leader will get him killed, is the one who shoots the last sniper in the desert ambush.

Why can't James save the man strapped into a bomb vest near the end of The Hurt Locker?

The timer runs out. The man was wired up against his will, so James has to abandon an innocent; the part went to Suhail Dabbach, an Iraqi actor living as a refugee.

After the bomb-vest blast in The Hurt Locker, what does a shaken Sanborn tell James he wants to do?

Have a son. Nearly killed, he reflects that only his parents would have mourned him, and admits that he hates the place and the job.

What does James do at the end of The Hurt Locker, after his spell back home?

Starts another combat tour. At home he tells his baby son there is only one thing he loves; the last scene has him back in Iraq with Delta Company, a full year of duty ahead.

Who wrote The Hurt Locker and reunited with its director for Zero Dark Thirty?

Mark Boal. While he was still in Iraq he sent Bigelow emails about what he was seeing, and those messages convinced her there was a film in it.

The Hurt Locker grew out of 'The Man in the Bomb Suit', a 2005 article in which magazine?

Playboy. Bigelow already knew the writer's work: she had earlier developed another of his articles for the magazine into the short-lived TV series The Inside.

The Hurt Locker takes its title from soldiers' slang first recorded during which war?

The Vietnam War. The slang for a place of deep pain outlived that war, and by Iraq bomb crews were saying an explosion puts you 'in the hurt locker'.

Which costly flop was Bigelow's last feature before The Hurt Locker, seven years earlier?

K-19: The Widowmaker. The submarine drama took about $66 million worldwide, well short of its budget, and when she returned with an Iraq script the major studios passed, leaving an independent financier to back it.

Which 2002 film first got The Hurt Locker's lead noticed, in the title role of a real serial killer?

Dahmer. The part brought him an Independent Spirit nomination, yet he went on playing mostly minor roles in action films until this lead came along.

Back home in The Hurt Locker, which supermarket aisle leaves James bewildered by its wall of choices?

The cereal aisle. The cut from the bomb-vest blast to a wall of boxes shows a man sure of himself in danger and lost at home; veterans tell the writer it is the scene that rings truest.

In which country was The Hurt Locker shot, at times within three miles of the Iraqi border?

Jordan. Its royal family backed the shoot, and the Jordanian military supplied the authentic vehicles seen on screen.

Why did the makers of The Hurt Locker reject Morocco as a filming location?

It didn't look like Iraq. Bigelow added that the extras there would have been North African rather than Arab, and for her the faces mattered as much as the streets.

Roughly how much did The Hurt Locker, an independent production, cost to make?

$15 million. That is the usual estimate, though one report put the cost at $11 million; almost every studio had passed, so the money was raised independently.

What do the on-screen captions in The Hurt Locker count down?

Days left in the unit's rotation. Bigelow let that calendar stand in for a plot: seven call-outs spread across 38 days, like going to the office with a bomb tech.

What does James keep in a box under his bed in The Hurt Locker?

Parts of bombs he has defused. His teammates find the habit plain weird, but to James each one is a keepsake of something that almost killed him.

On what format did Bigelow shoot The Hurt Locker, giving it a grainy, newsreel look?

Super 16 mm. Four hand-held crews often filmed at once, so the editors faced about 200 hours of footage for a film that runs just over two.

Which cinematographer, hired after his hand-held work on United 93, shot The Hurt Locker?

Barry Ackroyd. Long Ken Loach's regular cameraman, he ran four crews at once around a set that Bigelow kept 'alive and active in 360 degrees'.

At which festival did The Hurt Locker premiere in 2008, to a ten-minute standing ovation?

Venice. Even so, buyers hung back because earlier Iraq War films had lost money, and American audiences waited until the following June to see it.

Who beat The Hurt Locker's lead to the Best Actor Oscar?

Bridges. The Crazy Heart star won for playing an alcoholic country singer, and told the audience the award honoured his actor parents as much as him.

Which film tied The Hurt Locker for the most nominations at the 2010 Oscars, with nine each?

Avatar. Its director, James Cameron, had once been married to Bigelow, and her low-budget war film beat his record-breaking epic to the night's top prizes.

Which duo hosted the Oscars ceremony at which The Hurt Locker won Best Picture?

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. That year the Academy doubled the Best Picture field to ten to pull in more crowd-pleasers, yet a little-seen war drama took the prize.

Why was The Hurt Locker's producer Nicolas Chartier barred from attending the 2010 Oscars?

Emailing voters to snub a rival. His message urged them to back his film over 'a $500M film', which broke the rule against negative campaigning; he apologised and gave up his seats.

What did bomb expert Jeffrey Sarver claim in suing The Hurt Locker's makers?

The hero was based on him. The filmmakers said the character was a composite of several soldiers, and a federal judge threw the suit out and ordered Sarver to pay over $180,000 in legal fees.

Two of The Hurt Locker's six Oscars went to which pair of crafts?

Sound editing and sound mixing. Most of the film's audio was captured live on location instead of being dubbed in a studio, and one man, Paul Ottosson, shared in both awards.

The Hurt Locker opens with an on-screen quotation that fades to leave which phrase?

"War is a drug." It is the tail of a line by the war correspondent Chris Hedges about the rush of battle being a potent and often lethal addiction, the idea James goes on to embody.

For The Hurt Locker, Bigelow became the first woman ever to win which Academy Award?

Best Director. Only three women had even been nominated before her, and on the night she beat a field that included her former husband.

Which company picked up US distribution for $1.5 million after the Toronto screening?

It opened on just four screens in Los Angeles and New York in June 2009 and led the country in per-screen average for its first two weeks.

The Hurt Locker's producers announced a mass lawsuit in 2010 against people who had done what?

Downloaded it via BitTorrent. The film had leaked online some five months before American cinemas got it, and its makers threatened suits against tens of thousands of downloaders.

At which ceremony in February 2010 did The Hurt Locker win six awards, including Best Film?

The BAFTAs. A month earlier the Golden Globes had sent the same film home empty-handed from three nominations.

Which Lost star plays Connie, the mother of James's baby son, in The Hurt Locker?

Evangeline Lilly. Her few scenes carry the film's turn: at home with her and the baby, the man who was fearless among bombs cannot settle into ordinary life.

In 2020, The Hurt Locker was added to which roll of honour for films?

The National Film Registry. The Library of Congress picks up to 25 films a year for preservation, each at least ten years old, so this one got in soon after it became eligible, alongside Shrek and The Dark Knight.

Which 2007 western's score made Bigelow seek out Marco Beltrami for The Hurt Locker?

3:10 to Yuma. Beltrami said she liked the spirit of that Oscar-nominated score and wanted a loner-cowboy, Wild West flavour for the closing scenes of her war film.

How do a drunken James and Sanborn let off steam after the desert ambush in The Hurt Locker?

Trading punches. After a firefight in which they finally work as a team, the two rivals drink together and settle their scores blow for blow.

Which actor plays Colonel Reed, the officer who hails James as a 'wild man' in The Hurt Locker?

David Morse. His colonel appears for barely a scene, seeking James out after the burning car-bomb job just to introduce himself and admire his nerve.

By the Pentagon's account, why did it pull its assistance from The Hurt Locker in 2007?

Unapproved scenes were shot. Officials said the crew was filming material missing from the script they had cleared, one sequence showing troops in a poor light; the producers dispute the account.