Can The Hurt Locker Unseat Up in the Air as the Oscar Frontrunner?

It’s been a shaky year for film, or at least a shaky year for the kinds of movies that traditionally vie for awards consideration in general and the Oscars in particular. Thus a muddled, shapeless version of the normal buzz cycle has emerged, with few clear contenders running ahead of the rest.

Only Jeff Bridges, in Crazy Heart, had seemed to established frontrunner status for best actor. But in the past few weeks, a growing consensus has bubbled around Up in the Air, a movie with assets: A-list talent in front of and behind the camera, commercial appeal, a general sense that it’s indicative of our times. The movie’s backers have brought some regularity to the season, and sure enough, the film earned more Golden Globe nominations than any other movie this year—a classic signal that the buzz machine, if not necessarily the Academy itself, has moved to its side.

On a parallel track this week, however, was The Hurt Locker, the fervently championed Iraq actioner that is the only movie that was regularly mentioned as a potential Oscar contender all year. It won top accolades from critics in New York, Los Angeles and other cities, a sign that critics have thrown whatever weight they have behind the movie in most major markets.

As we and many others will be quick to point out, the favorites of critics’ societies have a tenuous relationship with Oscar voters at best. But The Hurt Locker does have some tricks at its behest. One has little to do with it: Because of a new method used to tally votes for best picture this year, a far smaller percentage of the overall vote is required to clinch a movie best picture, which could favor a film with a small but unwavering voting contingent. There is also the fact that influential New York Times critic Manohla Dargis published a much-discussed article this week about women directors in Hollywood (notably, the lack of them), with Kathryn Bigelow, the director of The Hurt Locker, mentioned as a prime example of how women can be successful in any genre.

And, of course, because Up in the Air has enjoyed such loud early praise, the inevitable detractors are sure to try to regain the conversation on the movie at some point. But with the exception of the one big wild card that no one can escape today—Avatar—the best-picture race seems poised to weather down to two movies that couldn’t have less in common. Let the best publicity team win.

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