Every Best Picture Oscar Winner Ranked Worst To Best
31. The Hurt Locker (2009)
The Hurt Locker surely deserves to pass as an all-timer war movie, capturing the horror of modern combat with mesmerising, harrowing results.
Starring Jeremy Renner as a soldier who thrives off the thrill of the fight, Kathryn Bigelow (who became the first woman to win Best Director, several decades too late) weaves together a complex tale of masculinity, trauma, and the futility of war that's at once stylish, brutal, and timely.
Intimate and bold, The Hurt Locker grips and disturbs with every scene, right up until its inevitable conclusion. If any modern Best Picture deserves a reappraisal, it has to be this one.