Every since fellow blogger Jeffrey Wells told us that Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq war actioner The Hurt Locker was like “having your heart operated on by a construction worker wielding a power pneumatic nail-driver. And the high-voltage stuff, which happens often, is, no joke, on the level of the armed creature-hunting and creature-evading sequences in Aliens,” we were hooked. The film, which debuted at this past year’s Toronto Film Festival, follows a U.S. Army bomb squad in Baghdad. With performances from Anthony Mackie and Jeremy Renner that earned Independent Spirit Award nominations, this thriller is easily one of the indie releases to watch in ’09.

The Hurt Locker was directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, K19: The Widowmaker). It stars Guy Pearce, Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Ralph Fiennes and Lost’s Evangeline Lilly. It is scheduled to hit theaters sometime in 2009. Check out the brand new international trailer below.