Bigelow has a shifting relationship with Hollywood and its conventional film standards and techniques. Her work "both satisfies and transcends the demands of formula to create cinema that's ideologically complex, viscerally thrilling, and highly personal". Social issues of gender, race, and politics are entrenched in her work of all genres. She often uses "purpose-built" camera equipment to create mobile shots. In many of her films, such as
The Hurt Locker,
Point Break, and
Strange Days, she has used mobile and hand-held cameras. gala, 2010|left|upright Bigelow's work is characterized by extensive violence. Most of her films include violent sequences and many revolve around the theme of violence. Violence has been a staple in her films from the beginning of her career. In her first short film
The Set-Up (1978), two professors deconstruct two men beating each other up and reflect on the "fascistic appeal of screen violence".
Blue Steel was her first venture into the
action film genre, with which she has stayed throughout her career and has found most success. The film revolves around a female police officer who is falsely accused of a murder and who in the process of clearing her name investigates a killing spree connected to the original murder. Similarly to
Near Dark, Bigelow inverts the typical action genre conventions by placing a female protagonist at the center. The film digs deeply into feminist issues and is often taught and studied by feminist film scholars. Her next film
Point Break, starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, was her breakout film in terms of mainstream success. The film follows a detective who goes undercover in a suspected criminal gang of surfers who primarily rob banks. It marks the first time that Bigelow used lengthy
Steadicam tracking shots. It was also her biggest financial success yet, grossing $83.5 million worldwide with a budget of $24 million. Although her next film,
Strange Days, which ruminates on the relationships between media, sex, race, class, and technology, had a budget of $42 million, it only grossed just under $8 million. Although the film flopped, it led Bigelow and her team to spend over a year developing a camera that intended to approximate human vision. The commercial failure of
Strange Days was followed by a stream of commercial and critical flops for Bigelow. Her films
The Weight of Water and
K-19: The Widowmaker received negative reviews from critics and little attention from the general public. With her independently produced film
The Hurt Locker she made a commercial and critical comeback. This film was her transition into political and historical film.
The Hurt Locker, which follows members of a bomb squad serving in the Iraq War, was Bigelow's first venture into pseudo-documentary style film, abandoning the aesthetic stylization found in
Strange Days and
Near Dark. The film utilizes the genre's tendency to use quick cuts, shaky camera, and rapid zooms. It also breaks with the conventional narrative structures of her previous films, following a more unorganized and experimental narrative structure. Her next film,
Zero Dark Thirty, is widely seen as a direct extension of
The Hurt Locker, going further in-depth of historical analysis and addressing issues of geopolitics and American foreign policy. The film was criticised for its depiction of the CIA's torture practices. Throughout her career, Bigelow has tended to go to extremes for her films. In
Point Break, while filming the skydiving scene, Bigelow was on the airplane with a parachute on, as she filmed Patrick Swayze throw himself into the sky. During surfing scenes in the same film, she would either paddle on a longboard or lean over a nearby boat as far as possible to get shots of Keanu Reeves surfing. For the opening of
Strange Days she controlled a crane that dropped a camera man off the edge of a tall building. For
The Hurt Locker, Bigelow filmed in Jordan in up to heat. == Recognition ==