15 Most Over-Rated Movies Of The 21st Century

Kathryn Bigelow made Academy Award history when The Hurt Locker, a wartime action drama focusing on a three-man bomb disposal unit in Iraq, scooped her the Best Director Oscar marking the first time a female director had received the accolade (and, depressingly enough, only the fourth time a female filmmaker had been nominated for the award) – no mean feat in a film industry still largely dominated by white dudes.

But there are niggling problems that put a damper on all the praise The Hurt Locker received after its release. Hailed for its apolitical approach and focusing on three soldiers’ individual experiences rather than the bigger picture of the Iraq War – a point repeatedly emphasised in interviews with Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal – the film is actually inherently political and, upon deeper inspection, more biased than it would like to think.

While it’s true that there isn’t much overt glorification of the USA’s place in the Iraq War, the film’s depiction of Iraqi citizens – who, bar a couple, are portrayed as shady, potential terrorist threats – are indisputably problematic whether unintentional or not and, for a film that asserts itself as non-partisan, certainly contradictory. There are some great war films out there, but The Hurt Locker isn’t one of them.