If Kathryn Bigelow's Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker wins the Best Picture Academy Award on Sunday, it'll be the eighth out-and-out war movie to win the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' top prize. Prior battle-scarred winners were Wings (1927-28), All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Patton (1970), The Deer Hunter (1978), Platoon (1986), and Braveheart (1995).
If you wish, feel free to add Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The English Patient (1996), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) to that list. Or even Mrs. Miniver (1942), which portrays — and embellishes — the British homefront. Or Schindler's List (1993), mostly set in a concentration camp. World War II is also featured in some way or another in Casablanca (1943), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and From Here to Eternity (1953).
Also, if it wins the Oscar, The Hurt Locker will be the first Iraq War movie to do so. Films set in World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Civil War (Gone with the Wind, 1939), and even those featuring battles for the independence of Scotland from the English and for the safety of Middle Earth have been honored with a Best Picture Oscar. The Iraq War, however, has been neglected by the Academy chiefly, perhaps, because movies dealing with that particular conflict have mostly generated mixed to mediocre buzz.
Photo: The Hurt Locker (Jonathan Olley / Summit Entertainment)