“Given that The Hurt Locker is set in Iraq and [director] Kathryn Bigelow has been a bit off the radar of late, journos and industryites mostly had a ‘show me’ attitude about it,” senior Variety critic Todd McCarthy wrote yesterday. “For the majority, Bigelow delivered, with a strong charge of visceral, stops-out action cinema.
![](/images/column/91308/renner.jpg)
Hurt Locker star Jeremy Renner
“I’m apparently not the only one to have noticed this, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that the film is a very cleverly disguised real-world remake of Bigelow’s ex-husband James Cameron‘s Aliens. (McCarthy may have been referring to my 9.9 review, but has anyone else made this observation?)
“The Hurt Locker is about a bomb-defusing squad of U.S. soldiers; as in Aliens, death can strike you from anywhere, anytime, and Jeremy Renner‘s risk junkie is Sigourney Weaver‘s Ripley, right down to the outer space outfit he sometimes has to wear.”
![](/images/column/91308/powerloader.jpg)
Aliens‘ Sigourney Weaver at controls of powerloader
![](https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/themes/amory/patreon-banner.jpg)