Back in September, Kathryn Bigelow told SpoutBlog that there’s a misconception regarding the failure of movies dealing with the Iraq War because so far we’d really only seen dramatic films about soldiers coming home. We hadn’t exactly seen any war movies about the ongoing conflict. “I mean, war is inherently dramatic, look at Black Hawk Down,” she explained, picking a film released a year prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Now it should make more sense that she referenced that specific title, as a new international trailer for Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker almost makes this film appear to be Black Hawk Down reset in Iraq. There seems to be a lot of similarly chaotic action involving an ensemble of talented actors running around a war-torn metropolis. The main difference is all the stuff with Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), which actually makes it potentially even more appealing to the action movie crowd, they who never tire of the “which wire do I cut?” cliches.

So why are we only seeing an international trailer, with no domestic release date for The Hurt Locker in sight (Summit Entertainment’s 2009 preview only mentions a Spring opening)? Over at Vulture, they joke that Summit is too busy with the Twilight sequel to pay attention to the acclaimed and awarded The Hurt Locker, yet they also speculate that this movie could leap over the supposed Iraq War film hurdle due to its action-heavy plot. I think it could do more than be a breakthrough for the subject matter; it should appropriately blow away the hurdle. Then again, The Kingdom, which didn’t even mention or take place in Iraq, should have done the same thing.