Zero Dark Thirty Review
A disturbing good movie.
Katherine Bigalow is a very talented movie maker. She has a gritty, no fluff approach that makes for movies that draw you in and engage you in ways guys who think multi million dollar special effects budgets in place of story telling are the way to go never can (cough cough Micheal Bey cough cough). She is an excellent director and I would see and most likely enjoy any film she made.
All her talents are evident in this film and I enjoyed it on many levels. However, this film labors under the curse of not only being derived from real events but derived from real events that we are all intimately familiar with and really care about a lot. I remember being happy when Osama Bin Laden was killed but at the same time being disturbed by the means by which it happened. He was an animal and deserved what happened to him (and were I alone in a room with him I would have happily beaten him to death with the nearest blunt object I could find), but the Unites States is a country of law and seeing men and women of our military and intelligence use water boarding, starvation, sleep deprivation, and summary execution of injured prisoners was really disturbing. This was made even more so in the knowledge that all those things really happened. Like the issue I always had with Titanic the idea of the seven CIA agents killed in a car bomb I just saw on the screen having really died is very off putting, as is the idea that we kept guys naked in a box sleeping in their own filth.
The other victim of the “based on true events” demon is the idea of a story arc. As this film is chronicled over ten years of real events there wasn’t much opportunity to show anything resembling a three act story line, or any kind of plot complication other than “Where the hell is he?” I honestly think some opportunities were missed. The main character, Maya (Jessica Chastain-Lawless, Tree of Life, The Help-hey, a trifecta! I think this is the first time I have had a star where I did three or more reviews) could have actually shown a character arc, but we learn so little about her personally and she plays the character so dead pan that you really can’t come to grips with what she is supposed to be feeling. There is some attempt in the last 1/3rd of the film and some kind of breakthrough in the last 30 seconds, but for the most part she was the robotic soulless automaton. 
The story could have also had more of an arc had they tried to dig a little deeper in to the investigation more Scooby Doo like (Scooby Doo image courtesy of the Cartoon T-Shirt category). You know, follow the money trail, etc. Instead it always falls back on to “enhanced interrogation” of insurgents. By the end of the movie the story felt like it was wearing interrogation water wings.
But again, since this is a true story odds are this is actually how it happened and I can’t really fault the movie for that. I’m just saying if you are going to the film in hopes of seeing something that fits into a more traditional story mode prepare to be disappointed. The story isn’t 100% accurate (in fact, I don’t know if it is even 70% accurate) but it was based on as much truth as possible.
I don’t know if I need to go into the story too much. SPOILER ALERT: Osama Bin Laden dies at the end. The movie covers the 10 year investigation to find him, driven for the most part by Maya in spite of some minor issues with other people trying to set other priorities. She was recruited in to the CIA in high school and has done nothing in her adult life beside hunt for OBL. Other than that, we know literally nothing about her. I actually learned more about some of the soldiers who carried out the raid at the end (and consequently like them more).
Anyway, guys get water boarded (and other things that some people might construe as cruel and unusual punishment). Stuff gets blown up. You get to see a little bit of what might be the internal workings of the CIA. After two hours of very little action you get to see an amazing raid by Navy SEALS that was really cool to watch.
The stars. Generally excellent film, with all of the Katherine Bigalow (Point Break, Hurt Locker) style. Three stars. As long as she was supposed to be cast as a remorseless CIA hunter, Jessica Chastain nailed it. One star. From a history perspective the film was really neat. One star. The raid in the Osama compound was super cool. Two stars. You do end up with a certain grim satisfaction at the end of the film even if you are not of a super patriotic bent (if you are you will probably have to change your shorts). One star. Total: Eight stars.
The black holes. If you are particularily empathetic, or feel water boarding is torture, a lot of the stuff our guys had to do to find him will really screw your head up. One black hole. Pacing was erratic. Sometimes it felt like the film was moving incredibly fast, other times it felt like it had gotten stuck in the mud and the director was just spinning the wheels. One black hole. That lack of a story or character arc I discussed earlier. One black hole. Total: three black holes.
A grand total of five stars. Should you see it? Probably. If you will be really turned off by the techniques used to hunt him down maybe not, but for the most part this is one of those films every American should see once. Date movie? No, not really. There is nothing going on the screen that will encourage your date to take off her clothes. Bathroom break? That’s a tough one. The scattered nature of this story means that at any moment a critical plot point could be dropped without warning. I’d say your best bet is the scene in Langley where the guy in charge bitches out everyone about how they suck at finding OBL and his cronies. It’s actually a good scene, but doesn’t contribute anything to the plot.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to post comments on this film or review here. Off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected] (invitations by studios to see advanced screenings of movies are particularly welcome. If there are any studio marketing people amoung my tens of readers I’ll buy you a Slurpee if you can make that happen). Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks and have a great day.
Dave
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