The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker By Mark Boal June 7, 2007 Shooting Draft BLACK SCREEN Arabic man YELLING over a bull-horn. TITLE: The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug. - Chris Hedges The loud BUZZ of an electric engine and the CRUNCHING of wheels traversing rough terrain. Then SIRENS, HORNS, SHOUTS. As the din intensifies, the quote recedes. FADE IN: EXT BAGHDAD STREET DAWN - ROBOT CAM POV A grainy, low-resolution view of a dusty dirt road. We’re low, just inches off the sun-washed ground, and moving fast. ZOOMING down a street littered with the refuse of war: spent munitions, rubber bits, animal waste -- all of which, from this odd, jarring perspective, looks gigantic, monstrous. We approach a crumpled COKE CAN, the white ‘C’ growing enormous on the screen, filling the screen like a skyscraper, SMASH into the can and barrel ahead. A RAG flutters, blocks our view, then flies away as we pop over a bump, catching air and a flash of the horizon line, BRIGHT SUN, then landing hard and continue zipping down the dusty road. CUT TO: EXT BAGHDAD STREET - DAWN A rushed, disorderly evacuation. Iraqi POLICE and SOLDIERS herd civilians away from some unseen danger. INTERCUT: A remote controlled TALON ROBOT (about a quarter million dollars of military-grade bomb squad electronics, aka ‘the bot’) whose SMALL VIDEO CAMERA we have been watching, drives down the side of the road on a pair of treads.