K-19: The Widowmaker

Kathryn Ann Bigelow (born November 27, 1951) is an American film director, working in the science fiction, action and horror genres.

Bigelow was born in San Carlos, California, United States, the only child of a paint factory manager and a librarian. She broke into cinema via the art world, starting her creative life as a painter as a fellow at the Whitney Museum in New York. Bigelow entered the graduate film program at Columbia University, where she studied theory and criticism. Her professors included Vito Acconci and Susan Sontag. Bigelow worked with noted conceptualist Lawrence Weiner and worked with the Art & Language collective.

Bigelow’s first short film, The Set-Up (1978), is a 20-minute deconstruction of violence in film. The film portrays “two men (Gary Busey included) fight[ing] each other as the semioticians Sylvère Lotringer and Marshall Blonsky deconstruct the images in voice-over.” Her first full-length feature was The Loveless (1982), a biker movie which she co-directed with Monty Montgomery. Next, she directed Near Dark (1987), which she co-scripted with Eric Red, who also co-wrote her 1990 film, Blue Steel. Blue Steel starred Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie police officer who is stalked by a psychopathic killer, played by Ron Silver.

Bigelow’s followed Blue Steel with Point Break (1991), which starred Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent who poses as a surfer to catch the “Ex-Presidents”, a team of surfing armed robbers led by Patrick Swayze who wear Reagan, Nixon, LBJ and Jimmy Carter masks when they hold up banks.

Bigelow’s 1995 film Strange Days was written and produced by her ex-husband James Cameron. However, despite good notices and a unique, surrealistic stylishness, it failed to attract a major audience.

Based on Anita Shreve’s novel of the same name, Bigelow’s 2000 film The Weight of Water is a portrait of two women trapped in suffocating relationships. The film is a departure in some ways for Bigelow in that it lacks the kinetic action and technical dazzle of her previous films.

In 2002 she directed K-19: The Widowmaker, starring Harrison Ford, about a group of men aboard the Soviet Union’s first nuclear powered submarine. Despite an action-packed storyline and attention to detail, the film tanked at the box office and was received with mixed reactions by critics, gaining an aggregate score of 58 on Metacritic.

Bigelow next directed the The Hurt Locker, which was released in June 2009. Set in post-invasion Iraq, the film received “universal acclaim” (according to Metacritic) and a 98% “fresh” rating from the “Top Critics” of Rotten Tomatoes. The film stars Brian Geraghty, Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie, with cameos by Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes.

Bigelow’s television credits include episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street (1997-1998) and the TV series Wild Palms (1993). She also directed the 1987 music video for the New Order song “Touched by the Hand of God”.—Wikipedia