Who is he?
An American investigative journalist. His first script, The Hurt Locker (released on 28 August), is an Iraq action drama that Time magazine called a "near perfect" war movie.
That's fightin' talk.
Especially when you consider that Iraq films have had a pretty rotten time of it. Boal based his script on his time with an elite bomb disposal unit. These are the volunteers who defuse bombs with seemingly little more than a pair of pliers and padded spacesuits for protection. An earlier article he wrote for Playboy was adapted by Paul Haggis and became In the Valley of Elah.
Wasn't the TV series Generation Kill written by an embedded journo, too?
Yes: Rolling's Stone's Evan Wright. Boal has got that same faultless ear for dialogue. His script puts you instantly inside his soldiers' daily kill-or-be-killed snap judgments: is that man with a mobile phone making a call or triggering a bomb? Shoot or not? Gripping stuff.
How did he come to write a script?
The suggestion came from director Kathryn Bigelow. The pair produced The Hurt Locker independently, with an unstarry cast (brief appearances from Guy Pearce and a beefed-up Ralph Fiennes aside). Jeremy Renner plays the new leader of a three-man unit - he's either a hero or a reckless cowboy, depending on how close you are to the bomb he's swaggering up to.
And what about the politics?
None to speak of. "There's no politics in the trenches," Boal has said, borrowing the old line. "It's a character piece sort of masquerading as an action movie."
What's next?
A piece about the secret war in Afghanistan.