MarkBoal Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Could The Hurt Locker be Kathryn Bigelow's big break into the upper echelon of desired action directors? In his review from TIFF last year, James Rocchi said: "Bigelow's a terrific action director, but the industry doesn't offer her the chance to demonstrate that as often as you might like; it could be sexism or just the bad juju that sticks to some directors that explains that, but either way Bigelow blows both those off the screen along with everything else in a blast of Dolby splendor and big-screen spectacle." Now Variety reports that we can start preparing for the next bout of thrills.

She's reteaming with Paramount and writer Mark Boal for a new action-adventure project called Triple Frontier. A "high-stakes ensemble project," the film will be set in the border zone between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, where the Igazu and Parana rivers come together and make for a hard-to-keep-an-eye-on mecca for organized crime. That might not be a lot to go on, but it sure hints to a myriad of possibilities.

But much more than the plot is what this will mean for Bigelow's career, and whether this feature will get more distribution love. Although lavished with praise, Box Office Mojo says that the film's widest release was on only 535 screens, where she raked in almost $9 million domestically. Do you think this film could turn the tide to super-action-director-stardom? Or will Bigelow remain a beloved, but not front-and-center, director?

(By James Rocchi - reprinted from the Toronto International Film Festival, 9/10/08)

The Hurt Locker sees director Kathryn Bigelow craft a big, booming tale of tension based on journalist Mark Boal's experiences and interviews with bomb disposal experts in the streets of Iraq. Toronto didn't just see The Hurt Locker earn raves from many critics; it also saw the film get picked up by Summit Entertainment for distribution. Cinematical spoke with Bigelow and Boal in Toronto about breaking the audience's unconscious link between an actor's salary and a character's destiny, whether or not their film is really apolitical, the fun and excitement of blowing things up on-set, how making the movie yourself is the best way to be sure you make the movie you want to and much more.Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Based on journalist Mark Boal's real experiences following bomb disposal experts in Iraq, The Hurt Locker isn't just a welcome return to big-screen action from director Kathryn Bigelow (who has wrung both fame and infamy from her art with Near Dark, Strange Days and Point Break). It's an assured, confident, swaggering piece of moviemaking that manages to not only evoke every war of the 20th century but also, despite the claims by makers and some reviewers that it's an 'apolitical' film, speaks very specifically to the Iraq war. Even so, plunging us into the thick of things alongside the highly-trained men (and they're all men here) who defuse bombs for the Army, Bigelow and Boal avoid the speeches and postures and long, contemplative talks of home front films like Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah by staying in Iraq, and they shun the loopy, loony formal experiments of Brian De Palma's Redacted. Boal and Bigelow stay laser-focused on one group of men with a singular mission, and make us live in the constant possibility of death. Viewed from half a world away, a bomb is a political concern; viewed from less than a foot away, a bomb's just a high-stakes exercise in problem-solving, where making a mistake means a final, terminal education in the physics of expanding gases.

The Hurt Locker follows three soldiers -- bomb tech James (Jeremy Renner) and his subordinates Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldrige (Brian Geraghty) into the jaws of death; it's all last names in The Hurt Locker, as seen on patches and heard in urgent radio dispatches. Early on, Bigleow establishes that people will be killed in this film -- with a bravura sequence that depicts a bomb's detonation on the macro and micro level, billowing bursts of smoke and pressure and flame intercut with gravel and dust leaping choreographed in lockstep by the pressure wave, as if God had slammed his fist on reality hard to make a point -- and while Renner, Mackie and Geraghty are fine actors, they're also unknown enough to subconsciously let us know that they aren't safe from what may happen.

The Hurt Locker sees director Kathryn Bigelow craft a big, booming tale of tension based on journalist Mark Boal's experiences and interviews with bomb disposal experts in the streets of Iraq. Toronto didn't just see The Hurt Locker earn raves from many critics; it also saw the film get picked up by Summit Entertainment for distribution. Cinematical spoke with Bigelow and Boal in Toronto about breaking the audience's unconscious link between an actor's salary and a character's destiny, whether or not their film is really apolitical, the fun and excitement of blowing things up on-set, how making the movie yourself is the best way to be sure you make the movie you want to and much more.Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

We've had so many war movies lately that it seems like there's a rite of passage that every actor and actress has to go through -- they must do the historical or current war picture. For some, they start racking up a few, as is the case with Charlize Theron. In 2000 she co-starred in Men of Honor, the Robert DeNiro and Cuba Gooding Jr. Navy flick. Now the South African actress has just wrapped In the Valley of Elah, Paul Haggis' film about a career officer and his AWOL, Iraqi soldier son. But Theron just can't seem to get enough of these warring dramas, as she's just signed on for another one.

In October, Chris Ullrich posted about The Hurt Locker, a project director Kathryn Bigelow had written with the war reporter who was also co-writer on Elah, Mark Boal. While Chris' predictions were ignored (he wanted Bigelow vets like Patrick Swayze), the Theron-headed cast isn't too shabby anyway. She will star alongside Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes and Willem Dafoe. The action drama is set in Iraq and details a bomb disposal unit. From PW: "Forced to play a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in the chaos of war, an elite Army bomb squad unit must come together in a city where everyone is a potential enemy and every object could be a deadly bomb." Unfortunately, the PR speak has made the end of that description sound like the film will be a sexual thriller -- sort of like Farrell's infamous sex tape meets Mission Impossible. Unfortunately, I don't think his adoring fans will be so lucky. Principal photography should gear up later this spring.