Director as 'Adrenaline Junkie': Commenting on Kathryn Bigelow's Genre Experiments, Thematic Interests and Populism

Kathryn Bigelow's films can polarise viewers and tend to be either highly praised or simply dismissed by critics, who often register and emphasise a split between the early and the most recent films. In her work there seem to be more thematic complexities, stylistic and generic experiments and more popular elements than she is usually credited with, making her films both highly sophisticated and highly populist.