Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker began quietly knocking socks off while the bloated ruckus of Transformers 2 was raking in the coin. Nearly two months later, The Hurt Locker continues to gain financial and critical steam on the 500 or so screens it’s playing on. Now, Variety reports the writing/directing duo of Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow are partnering again for a “high-stakes ensemble project,” that takes place in la triple frontera –a dangerous border area in South America.
Reports are quick to note the mob activity that takes place in the tough-to-monitor river convergence between Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. The location is infamous for frequent criminal activity, but I believe the filmmakers will be more interested in the area’s relatively recent connection with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist cells. In fact, Paraguay housed around 400 US soldiers dedicated to anti-terrorism and urban warfare in 2005. There was a lot of curiosity about the shady goings on in Paraguay at the time- more curiosity than there was information.
We haven’t seen too many movies involving terrorism that weren’t backdropped by blown-up buildings and sand, so an exploration into the more obscure theaters of the War on Terror would be interesting. Perhaps Boal and Bigelow are eyeing a story more concerned with the South American mafia, I don’t believe they’re through with terrorism yet.