Rookie Blue

It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of Kathryn Bigelow, and I'm always interested in seeing her films when I get a chance. Ever since I first saw The Hurt Locker I have tried to collect her movies. When I heard about her film Blue Steel through my action cinema class I quickly became interested in it. One of my favorite female directors made a movie about a tough female cop? How could I resist? Before long, interest turned into a desire to see this film, and desire became an obsession. Next thing I knew I had to find this movie. I combed every potential channel I could find. I checked countless video stores (some more than once) as well as Netflix and HBO on Demand to know avail. It seemed like this film was impossible to find.

Over the last few months my desire grew increasingly to the point where it was starting to drive me insane. Every time I wandered into a video store all I could think about was finding a copy of Blue Steel. I was not even sure if it was going to be worth it but something kept compelling me to search for this particular film no matter how futile it proved. Then finally this morning I had a new idea; check out the media commons library on campus (which happens to have a huge selection of films). Turns out they did in fact have it all this time (on both DVD and video cassette) and I was able to check it out. Of course I'll have to return it, but I finally managed to fulfill my desire to see this early film from the director of The Hurt Locker. So after spending half a year relentlessly combing every shelf of any store that had DVDs for this one film that seemed impossible, was it worth it? Oh yes, it was.

Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a tough woman who has just graduated to becoming a recognized officer of the New York Police Department. She is a woman who has proven that she can hold her own in a male-dominated profession (this being a major theme throughout). Unfortunately, things are cut short on her first night as a cop when she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time: witnessing a convenience store robbery in progress. Naturally she tries to interfere and has to shoot the perpetrator. However, one of the hostages, a strange fellow by the name of Eugene Hunt (Ron Silver) steels the perpetrator's gun and escapes the crime scene, leaving Turner to be accused of police brutality and suspended.

Hunt turns out to be a deranged lunatic who also becomes obsessed with Turner, going as far as to carve her name into bullets and fire on random pedestrians using the gun from the crime scene. Turner then finds herself in a brief romantic relationship with Hunt, only to end up in a violent cat and mouse chase as he attempts to manipulate her, framing her as a Dirty Harry-esque rogue cop who doesn't play by the rules. Now it is up to Turner to figure out how to expose Hunt for the monster he is and bring an end to his reign of terror.

I should probably point out that Blue Steel isn't exactly a typical action movie, though it certainly draws inspiration from some. There is definitely some inspiration from Dirty Harry (especially evident in the relationship between Turner and Hunt) and Blade Runner (mainly in terms of atmosphere), but in many ways this is more of an art film. While the story itself is not too hard to follow the movie as a whole is very subjective, at times even surreal, and one that tries to make the viewer think about and question what they are seeing.

This approach allows it to be a very psychologically-driven experience rather than something driven by a simple adrenaline rush (I suspect this is probably the reason why many consider it one of Bigelow's weaker films; a lot of them probably went in expecting a more straight forward action thriller). As a result, the film is more slow-paced than one would normally expect. It takes its time to allow the viewer access to the minds of its two central characters and to explore how both are simultaneously brought together and pulled apart over the course of the film.

The theme of challenging established gender conventions is a prominent one throughout, most notably in Megan's characterization. This is even reflected in her wardrobe, which constantly places her in attire more often seen on men, most notably the full blue police uniform (complete with peaked cap) and the presence of shoulder holsters. She is also a very strong character, with attention constantly being paid to her tough attitude and her wit (especially towards the end of the film, when she is locked in a metaphorical Chess game with Eugene).

Hunt also works as a disturbing antagonist. His weird deranged nature serves as an early precursor to the "adrenaline junkie danger seekers" that would become common in many of Bigelow's later films (Bodhi in Point Break and Sgt. First Class William James in The Hurt Locker arguably being the two best-known examples). However, unlike those later figures or Dirty Harry's Scorpio (from whom he obviously draws inspiration) Hunt is actually able to pass for an ordinary man. This adds a few extra layers of unease on the few occasions when he refrains from showing his true colours, since he is very clever in setting up Turner in such ways so that most of the other officers don't believe her.

Watching it today is especially horrifying since there are actually films still being made in which this kind of character would be the hero. He did display a vibe reminiscent of so-called love stories such as The Age of Adaline and Fifty Shades of Gray. His deterioration of character is also conveyed visually through a combination of body language, atmosphere, and costuming (he goes from wearing a fancy business suit to looking like a homeless man). By emphasizing these aspects of his character right from the beginning, instead of leaving it as a twist for the end, we are able to get into the twisted mind of a psychopath, an interesting if unsettling experience. At the same time, however, there is also an enigmatic quality to the whole thing, as the film never spells anything out but leaves the viewer to imagine what kind of thought process go through his head.

I don't know why this film is so hard to find, but it shouldn't be. I don't care if it's Criterion, Kino, Alliance, Mongrel, or some obscure indie distribution firm nobody has heard of. Somebody please get this film released on DVD again! It is a brilliant piece of work from Kathryn Bigelow and one I find myself tempted to rank as being among her best (right up there with The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty). Blue Steel is arguably one of her most interesting projects, with its strange and subjective approach to what in the hands of any other director might have been a conventional action thriller. If you are a fan of her work, or even if you are just looking for some unusual police films, this is a must-see.

Women in Film Blogathon Part II: Kathryn Bigelow

I've started the exciting second part of the Women in Film Blogathon but it seemed to make sense to put together an entry of my own, especially seeing as I've entered the other Blogathons I'm running at the moment. The trouble is, unfortunately, that I don't know that many female directors. There are some female directors I can respect for a specific film. I was intrigued by Maya Deren's experimentation in Meshes of the Afternoon. I also enjoyed Sally Potter's Orlando and Julie Taymor's Across the Universe. However, I don't seem to know that many women directors through more than a name or a tiny sample of their work. Nearly all of my top favourite directors; including Stanley Kubrick, Sergio Leone, John Carpenter, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, The Coen Brothers, Georges Méliès; are all white men. Evidently this is something I need to work on.

I needed to write about someone I knew well, someone who had a fascinating body of work, and who better than one of the most famous women in contemporary filmmaking? There is no questioning the historical significance of Kathryn Bigelow. She is after all the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Picture, but what is it that makes her such an unusual director? There is something about her that seems to make her stand out in a profession where women are slowly starting to become more prominent, arguably bringing her to just as much fame as her male contemporaries.

Kathryn Bigelow has directed a total of nine feature films, but she is probably best known for her most recent projects: The Hurt Locker (for which she won the Oscar for Best Picture) and Zero Dark Thirty, though some might also know her for Point Break and K-19: The Widowmaker. Other more obscure films under her belt include The Loveless, Near Dark, Blue Steel, Strange Days, and The Weight of Water, and that's not even getting into her television work. Across her movies, Bigelow has proven herself to be a versatile director, starting with horror movies and later branching into action, war, political thrillers, crime, and historical pictures, as well as combinations thereof. It is becoming more common today to see women working as directors, so what is it that makes Bigelow stand out so effectively as she has.

I think part of what makes Kathryn Bigelow such an interesting auteur is simply in how un-feminine her movies are. She often takes on subjects and genres that would generally be considered "masculine", and her films often have all-male or predominantly male casts. The Hurt Locker has a grand total of one significant female character who only appears in a few scenes very late in the movie. K-19 has only one woman with a very brief speaking part who serves as a motivation for a male character. Even Zero Dark Thirty, which actually had a female protagonist, still had her surrounded by men with only one other female character playing a notable role.

Naturally, male bonding becomes a major theme in her movies. Point Break has a love story but a lot of the focus is on the relationship between Johnny Utah and Bodhi. The one major female character, Tyler, is used in large part as a "playing piece" for the men, first as a way for Johnny to enter the surfing community and later by Bodhi to manipulate Johnny into joining his gang. In many ways it resembles a "buddy film", with the relationship even taking on a few homoerotic undertones at times (which is odd considering the presence of a heterosexual romance). K-19 has a sense of camaraderie among men that I'd swear draws from Battleship Potempkin, particularly in the relationship between the two senior officers. The majority of The Hurt Locker concerns the tension between Sgt. James and his partners.

Even Zero Dark Thirty has a bit of the male bonding. Despite the presence of a female protagonist, the cast is still predominantly male, which makes Maya stand out all the more. Out of all the people she could have connected with, it is the only other female character of significance, Jessica. These two form a close friendship very quickly. Unfortunately, Jessica's death forces Maya to rely more on herself. The male bonding in this case is used as a way of isolating the heroine, making her feel more like an outsider as well as to single her out as the one person who can catch Bin Laden. There is also a sense of camaraderie among the Navy SEALs, who take up most of the climax.

Of course, just because Bigelow's films are predominantly male does not mean she is incapable of including strong female characters when she wants to. When watching Point Break, I was actually far more invested with Tyler and her relationship to Johnny than I was with the whole "surfers pretending to be presidents robbing banks" plot that the movie insisted on focusing on. I think it actually might have been better if they had changed the focus around. Zero Dark Thirty also has a very strong female protagonist who persistently moves onward in her mission to stop a dangerous terrorist. She also has a great array of male characters, one of the most interesting being the adrenaline junkie Sgt. William James in The Hurt Locker.

At first glance, the predominantly masculine nature of Bigelow's work could be seen as detrimental, but she is still every bit as much a feminist filmmaker as the likes of Sally Potter or to be fair any of the women directors that have been discussed in this blogathon. The feminist aspects of her filmmaking just work in a different way. While other women might want to put the focus on creating strong female characters or promoting women's rights (as is the case with Orlando, a film that is hardly subtle about its feminist messages),

Bigelow seems to take whatever scripts interest her. Few if any of her movies actually address gender dynamics, at least not directly. Instead, she can be seen as a feminist filmmaker simply on the grounds that she shows a woman can make great movies. I don't see any reason why it should be a problem. After all, most of the few all-female movies that have been made (i.e. The Women and The Descent) were directed by men, so why shouldn't a woman be allowed to direct an all-male film. She was briefly married to James Cameron, a male director for whom strong female characters are a trademark, so it seems to fit.

In Bigelow's films, the interactions between the characters take precedence above all else. In many cases, there isn't a linear story in the strictest sense, at least not one that is presented in a classical fashion. Instead her movies take the form of a series of vignettes that focus on the interactions between a small group of characters, The Hurt Locker being one of the best examples of a such a structure. The central focus becomes the relationships between the main characters, with their ultimate objective being marginalized.

This leads to a common trend in Bigelow's films involving the "invisible enemy". In her films, the true "antagonists", if you can call them that, are shown as little as possible. K-19: The Widowmaker, has a sub-plot involving an American destroyer and helicopter, but since the focus is on a Russian submarine, the only Americans we see are in filmstrips and one man seen from a distance in the helicopter. The Hurt Locker refrains from showing us any terrorists outside of when they are visible to the three main characters and deliberately avoids addressing the politics of America's role in Iraq. Even in Point Break, the actual villains are kept anonymous by wearing masks resembling former presidents.

One of the best examples of Bigelow's interest in an "invisible enemy" would have to be Zero Dark Thirty. There are a number of ways a film about hunting down Osama Bin Laden could have been done, but Bigelow prefers to keep us in the dark about his operations. We never so much as see a photograph of Osama Bin Laden until the very end... after he has been shot and killed. Even then, Bigelow prevents us from getting a clear look at the body, keeping shots depicting it brief, dark, or at an angle that makes it harder to see. Audiences of the film likely have seen pictures of Bin Laden, so we see enough to recognize it is in fact him, but that is all the film is inclined to show us.

The antagonists of her films are not even treated as an anonymous enemy the same way as the German or Japanese soldiers in the old World War II combat films. In those movies, the enemy soldiers were stripped of their humanity in order to eliminate the emotional repercussions of killing a human being. Bigelow certainly does not skip on the psychological effects of killing someone (even the Navy SEALs in Zero Dark Thirty are a bit shaken after killing Bin Laden), but marginalizing the enemy makes them less an actual antagonist and more like part of the background.

If anything, the central conflict becomes less about finding the enemy than it is about how the relationships between the main characters interfere with that ultimate endgoal. Point Break may be one of the best examples, as it is Johnny's friendship with Bodhi that interferes with his task to put that man behind bars. Likewise K-19 focuses on the mounting tension between different members of the crew, first questioning the orders of their new commanding officer and later as they desperately try to figure out how to respond to a disaster in the submarine's reactor. The conflict over whether the crew should call for help or stay aboard and attempt to prevent the submarine from exploding while facing radiation poisoning interferes with them reaching a solution. Zero Dark Thirty has Maya struggling to persuade her superiors that she has indeed found Bin Laden.

Most great directors have a style that defines their work and makes it unique, and this is a big part of why Kathryn Bigelow stands out so well. She has this style of filmmaking that is all her own, with nobody else quite like her. Her movies do not stick strictly to a classical model, but still make sure to tell coherent and compelling stories about relationships, usually in a non-romantic light (Point Break being a partial exception) and among men. You don't see a lot of directors, at least not in Hollywood, who take such an approach to their movies.

The classical system of Hollywood filmmaking developed in the Studio Era (and arguably still the dominant mode of storytelling today, though perhaps not as strictly enforced) is that narrative comes above all else. Every other aspect of the movie: character development, visual effects, exposition, is secondary to advancing the narrative. The story is presented in a linear cause-and-effect format, with one scene leading into the next, and any deviation from that structure (i.e. flashbacks) are to be clearly indicated.

Many Hollywood directors who have managed to make their names stand out, such as Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Sergio Leone, Alfred Hitchcock, and to a lesser extant John Carpenter; are people who have dared to challenge the established formula. All of these men made movies in their own way, not letting the confines of Hollywood hold them down. Kathryn Bigelow has done the same, making movies the way she feels they need to be made. Some are more successful than others: The Hurt Locker was a great movie that deserved that Best Picture Oscar while Point Break was okay at the most, but in both cases she made them in the way that seemed to make the most sense to her.

The fact that Kathryn Bigelow is a woman does not play into or influence her films in the slightest. Like any great male director she has a style all her own that makes her films unique, including allowing her stand apart from other feminist filmmakers. Watching her movies, one gets the sense a director like Bigelow simply takes the scripts that interest her, regardless of their content or whether they have a strong female lead (and if it does, that's just an added bonus to an already great movie). She works more or less the same way as any male auteur in Hollywood, showing that a woman can be every bit as capable of making great movies as any man.

Character Profile: Maya

While I'm still waiting on entries to my Women in Film Blogathon I thought I'd post one of my own about an interesting female character. It is an especially interesting case because as far as I know this is the first time director Kathryn Bigelow has given us a strong female protagonist, and she does the job quite nicely. I am of course talking about Jessica Chastain's performance as Maya in Zero Dark Thirty.

I don't have much information on the actual person Maya was based on, outside of the fact that her name was changed for the film probably for security reasons. Nonetheless, what we have here is a strong, determined woman who takes the job of single-handedly going after the most dangerous man on Earth and even in the face of multiple obstacles and mounting pressure she refuses to give up in her pursuit of Osama Bin Laden.

We see this characterization established right at the beginning in her relationship with Dan at a "Black Site" (basically a secret torture camp set up by the CIA outside of American jurisdiction to get information from suspected terrorists). She never takes any action herself, but she always maintains that she can handle the brutality and watches up close several violent beatdowns of a prisoner without showing any signs of unease. This determination comes into play when she opts to find more creative outlets by which to convince the prisoner to speak, such as temporarily letting him out and tricking him into thinking he gave information that saved a bunch of lives (when in fact he had withheld information and a lot of people died).

This sheer sense of determination continues throughout the film. Maya refuses to give up, even when pressure is put upon her by her superiors. When they do have a lead she presses for it to be followed, to the point where she makes a point of counting the amount of time in which no progress has been made (by writing the numbers on her boss's window in marker). It all gets to the point where eventually she is the one person who is willing to confidently say with 100% certainty that Bin Laden is hiding where she has been led to suspect he is.

On the other hand, though, Maya is also a great character because she isn't perfect. She isn't cast as being better or smarter than any of the guys she works with. She does have her weaknesses and moments of emotion. The film doesn't exactly hide the fears and anxieties that go through her head, and she has plenty of reasons to feel that way (being increasingly trapped in her headquarters to the point where she can't so much as pull out of a driveway without being fired upon). She also develops a friendship with her partner Jessica and is clearly upset when she is killed trying to speak with a supposed informant. On the other hand Jessica's death gives Maya even more of a drive to keep up the search.

In addition, it is interesting that for all the determination Maya displays, it does have its consequences. It is summed up brilliantly in the final scene with no dialogue, when after spending a decade chasing Bin Laden and finally catching him Maya becomes unsure of what to do with herself. The shot of her sitting alone in an airplane, unsure how to answer the pilot's question of "where do you want to go?" as she suddenly bursts into tears. All through the film she has kept her head up and this single image of her crying provides such a contrast yet at the same time it emphasizes the confusion going through her head, the fact that she has no idea what to do now that all that determination has paid off.

Maya is a great character. She is a complex and well-rounded individual, with sufficient strength to make her engaging but imperfect enough to make her seem real. She is the perfect sort of character to guide us through the complicated events of Zero Dark Thirty, to the point where the movie may well be more about her than Bin Laden himself (who doesn't even appear until the very end, after he's been shot, and even then we only get a few glimpses of his corpse).

War Is a Drug: Analyzing Themes in The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow’s award-winning film, The Hurt Locker, is a story about a man, Sgt. William James, who loses himself in war. War is compared to a drug, something so compelling that once one is caught in it they cannot stop. It is addictive. From the start, James is shown to be aggressive, headstrong and reckless unlike the more cautious Sgt. Thomson. In James’ first scene, there is a loud heavy metal soundtrack playing, presumably non-diegetic, before James suddenly turns off a radio, showing off his aggressive character.
He then begins to remove the plywood from the windows despite Sanborn pointing out that they were put there to block mortar shells.

This serves to foreshadow many of the reckless choices James makes later in the film: approaching a bomb without first investigating with the robot, removing his bomb suit and headset while defusing a car bomb, forcing a merchant at gunpoint to take him to the home of a kid he believes was murdered, and leading his squad to locate a possible bomber rather than wait for backup (which results in Eldridge getting shot). He is extremely confident in himself, almost considering himself to be invincible, and that the war cannot touch him. He is also ignorant of the consequences for his actions, which includes the near death of one of his own men and nearly being killed himself.

The camera is set up as such to invoke feelings of unease on the audience. Throughout the film, the camera shakes slightly as if it were handheld in order to create a sense of authenticity. When the action starts, the camera gets up close to the protagonists, the shots cut together more quickly, and the shaking becomes more intense in order to unsettle the viewer, who realizes that the bombs can go off rather easily, and James is often taking extensive risks without thinking.

This intensity also serves to help build up not only suspense, but also a feeling of adrenaline- allowing the viewer to get a glimpse into the thrill James feels while disarming bombs. This sort of feeling is first set up in the opening scene, when Thomson is unable to escape from an explosive in time and is subsequently killed, showing how this line of work can easily go wrong. The explosion itself happens in slow motion, emphasizing the destruction that ensues.

The first ten minutes of the film set up the danger that James endures every time he goes to defuse a bomb. It is worth noting that Guy Pearce, who plays James’ predecessor Sgt. Thomson, is a fairly well-established actor in contrast to the then-unknown Jeremy Renner, and at first the story is set up to look as though he is the main character. This creates a shocking reveal when Thomson is suddenly killed in the opening scene making way for the real protagonist.

The fact that a well-known actor is killed off so early in the film helps to emphasize the fact that in war, anyone can die by creating a false expectation (that Thomson is the main character) which is suddenly shattered. It is also interesting that Thomson is killed as early as he is despite following protocol, while James works against regulations and survives, but nearly kills one of his own men.

The moment in the opening scene where Thomson is caught in a blast also parallels a later moment in the film when James is unable to remove the vest of a man forced to wear a suicide bomb. In both cases, the characters realize too late the danger they are in and attempt to make a run for it, only to be caught in the blast. However, while Thomson continues to run in an attempt to survive and is killed, James turns and faces the blast head on expecting to die, but survives.

The explosives themselves are a major motif in the film. With a few exceptions, the majority of the explosives which appear on screen are of very similar, familiar shape- large grey cylinders. In actuality, improvised explosives are likely to come in many different shapes and sizes. The reason Kathryn Bigelow may have opted for this approach was to create a sense of familiarity in the bombs- that both the audience and James will immediately recognize. Eventually, the constant finding of bombs becomes an everyday occurrence for James, to the point where both he and the audience give it very little thought.

The antagonists of the film are for the most part unseen and unidentified. On some level this makes them even scarier. In the scene with the British contractors, the three protagonists, along with five other people, get ambushed by snipers, but neither they nor the audience knows for sure where the shots are coming from. In fact, when one of the contractors jumps into the Humvee, he seems to be firing at nothing, as he is unable to see the target, and is quickly dispatched by the snipers. This is further affected by the fact that visible heat waves are present when the characters look through the scope of the sniper rifle, blurring the image greatly and making it harder to see the enemy targets.

This element is also established in the opening scene, when the bomb that kills Thompson is detonated by a man with a cell phone who is entirely unseen before Eldridge spots him. The fact that the enemy is never truly identified also makes them seem less human, meaning that neither the characters nor the audience feels much sympathy for them. This eliminates the ethical implications of killing another man, causing the characters’ casual attitude towards their everyday routine to make more sense.

In the end, when James gets home he finds his life to be very plain and empty – something as simple as choosing cereal seems unbelievably overwhelming and meaningless to him. The only thing he can do is go back to Iraq and continue fighting.

Through a combination of editing and cinematography, the audience is able to get a feel for the adrenaline rush James starts to become addicted to during his experiences in the face of danger, drawing their attention toward his constantly taking greater risks in order to keep the adrenaline going. The sense of paranoia created by the fact that the antagonists are never truly identified adds to the suspense as well as making them less human. This allows the viewer to experience the same thrill as James does throughout. All these elements combine together to carry the message that war is a highly addictive drug.

Kathryn Bigelow: One of the Guys, Just a Different Sex

Back when I wrote about my favorite directors, I tried to pick the four that I thought to have had the biggest impact on me. As I noted there it wasn't the most diverse selection, given that all four choices were white men and only one (Sergio Leone) was non-American. I think it makes sense then to write something on a female director that I admire. More specifically, the fascinating character of Kathryn Bigelow. She has already made history as the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Picture, which is admirable in itself, but there is a lot more to her work than that alone.

She is hardly the first woman to gain recognition as a director. Before her we had the experimental filmmaker Maya Deren with advant-garde shorts such as Meshes of the Afternoon (which I strongly suspect may have been an influence on David Lynch, one of my favorite directors). One thing I do find interesting about Kathryn Bigelow, at least from what I have seen of her so far, is the fact that her films are very masculine. In fact, there actually aren't a whole lot of female characters across her body of work. She's even done a few moves that for the most part have an almost entirely-male cast as with The Hurt Locker or K-19: The Widowmaker.

In The Hurt Locker you have Evangeline Lilly appearing as the ex-wife of the protagonist, but she doesn't have a lot of screentime. K-19: The Widowmaker has no female characters outside of a few extras near the beginning, largely because it centers on the crew of a Russian submarine during the Cold War. Some of her other films have female supporting roles but it was not until her most recent film Zero Dark Thirty that we get a strong female protagonist in the form of the C.I.A. operative Maya.

The subject matter itself is also stuff that may seem "manly" and may be more commonly expected to be handled by a male director. The war genre in general is very masculine, given how hard it is to find a war movie with any major female characters at all, let alone a strong female lead. Naturally, this is the sort of genre you'd typically imagine to be directed by a man, and indeed a lot of the best-known war films were (Paths of Glory, Zulu, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Saving Private Ryan to name a few), and yet The Hurt Locker may well be, at least at the moment, the most iconic depiction of the war in Iraq on film.

One reason could be that she may not be attempting to enforce a feminist agenda, or at least not one as obvious as other women in the film industry. You could say she is sort of like a real-life version of the "Hawksian woman" (minus the usual romantic sub-plot, unless you include her brief marriage to James Cameron) in so far as she is the intelligent, atractive, sharp-witted woman who also happens to just be "one of the guys". She may be a woman in a predominantly male field but she does the kinds of projects that interest her, as opposed to simply doing ones that help promote woman's rights or draw attention to the fact that they were made by a woman.

Compare her work to the likes of Sally Potter's Orlando, which is a great film but not exactly subtle in its messages about gender inequality. Whereas Potter's films seem to focus on emphasizing the role in society, Bigelow's films tend to focus on more masculine subject matter. In that sense you could call Bigelow a feminist, but in a different sense, as rather than looking to convince the viewer of society's issues with gender relations Bigelow proves her worth and capability as a director by just making great films.

It is for this reason that Kathryn Bigelow is an admirable director. While other women in the business may try to emphasize promote equality in their films, Bigelow opts for something different by proving herself every bit as competent at making the same kinds of movies as the guys. Over the course of her career, Bigelow had made action films, war movies, thrillers, and historical films. Her significance to modern cinematic history is undeniable as a result.