(Thumbnail image: The Hurt Locker)

"The Hurt Locker" is up for nine Oscar nominations and is one of the favorites to win Best Picture, but now insiders say its chances could be sabotaged by what some are calling a last-minute smear campaign.
 
We've got perspectives from Newsweek, The Week, MSNBC, FOX News and The Daily Beast.

If it is a smear campaign, it wouldn't be anything new in the cut-throat award season.  In fact, movie makers have been using them to try to sway voters for decades.  To put that tactic into perspective, Newsweek highlights some past victims.
 
“'Slumdog Millionaire' was unstoppable on the awards circuit. Sure enough, a news story broke that the two 8-year-old kids in the film were underpaid and exploited on set”

So what’s the deal with “The Hurt Locker”?  The Week points to a New York Times piece that starts the controversy.
 
“Some allege that the Times' piece, in which soldiers dismiss The Hurt Locker as laughable and "disrespectful," may have been instigated by rival producers.”

The New York Times may have started all the talk, but many other media outlets are now jumping on the bandwagon.  MSNBC talked to a soldier who bashes the film for what he calls inaccuracies.

“We’re talking anything right down to the smallest details about uniforms, about military protocol and things like that.  It turned into a film that really had everything wrong with the U.S. Military and operations in Iraq.”

“One of the things that I took away from the film that was particularly insulting was its portrayal of the average soldier on the ground in Iraq. It almost seems as though the infantry that surrounded Sergeant James and his teammates were complete inept at any type of military operation.”

A FOX News military commentator defends the film, calling it entertaining, which is, afterall, the point of movies.

 
“I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  I think it does a really good job portraying the intensity of the job.”

“I have to understand and what I had to keep reminding myself during this movie was that it was a movie, it’s not a documentary, nor is it a training film and just to sit back, enjoy the story and don’t read too much into it.”

Despite the controversy from both sides, The Daily Beast says the campaign came out at a suspiciously convenient time.

“Given that The Hurt Locker was released in theaters last summer (a more likely time for critics to come out of the woodwork) and that the due date for Oscar ballots was four days after the story ran, one Oscar consultant— who has nothing to do with 'The Hurt Locker' — called the article ‘Smear 101’”

Some Academy members even wanted to change their vote -- after -- the story broke.  Smear campaigns have gone both ways in the past – sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.
 

Writer: Alyssa Caverley

Producer: Newsy Staff