Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

[bigburner]

With Leonard Leonard Maltin’s advice "don't get your history from the movies" wringing in my ears I sat down to watch this film in a slightly sceptical state of mind. If you haven’t heard Zero Dark Thirty is a film about the mission to locate and capture/kill Osama bin Laden. I am pleased to report that no Canadians or New Zealanders were defamed or belittled in the making of this film.

I suppose the saving grace for those of us who prefer a truthful depiction of history is that the truth in this case may never be known. Well perhaps not in my lifetime. If any of you out there have intelligence connections then please feel free to chip in. The benefit of not knowing the true story meant that I had to judge the film on its merits, i.e. how believable I thought it was. There were some things that didn’t make sense, like crediting a single female CIA agent for most of the success of the endeavour, but for the most part I thought it was credible. That’s how naïve I am folks.

I really enjoyed the fact that the film was slow moving. Rome wasn’t built in a day and 11 years of effort can’t be depicted in 80 minutes. Zero Dark Thirty is just under 160 minutes long, which will be too long for those movie goers who crave instant gratification.

Much has been made of the torture scenes, including a fair sprinkling of moral outrage and righteous indignation. In the film torture is depicted as an effective method of obtaining intelligence. Some critics have claimed this means that the film endorses the use of torture. I didn’t see it that way. The film simply records the fact that the Americans tortured prisoners to obtain intelligence, which I believe is what happened. Whilst I abhor the use of torture I couldn’t help thinking how mild the torture was compared to what they would have done to us.

My recommendation? Watch this film. It kept me engrossed for the full 160 minutes.

Nigel.

[George Bellefontaine]

Hi, Nigel.
I watched this film Sunday night and was going to post a little review today, but yours pretty much sums things up. The thing about this film is that even though you knew the actual outcome, you still held onto the edge of your seat during the raid on BinLaden's hideout. As to how accurate the film is, well as you say " I had to judge the film on its merits " and that's pretty much what I did. I admire Kathyrn Bigelow's work, so the slow pace didn't bother me. I felt the time was necessary to develop the characters. Due to the murky darkness, I did find it difficult to make out exactly what was happening during the raid. But other than that, I loved the film.

[Ovation]

Plan to watch this one this week (I have a professional as well as personal interest in this title as I teach Modern Middle Eastern history and often make use of cinematic material--in excerpt or in full--to illustrate a point and spark discussions about dramatic recreations of real events). Looking forward to it.

[Dmantis]

I've been wanting to watch this as well , just haven't had the time.

[Chris D]

Just rented and watched this on BD. GREAT movie. Lots about it that I appreciated. Like Nigel, I actually appreciated the interrogation scenes, because I too think it's very possible that they happened like was shown. I don't think this story, in EVERY aspect, should be sugarcoated in any way, about any "side". From the start of the story on Sept 11th, it's a raw, visceral, story, with brutality, life, and death, touching the worst parts of humanity, and to pretend otherwise would be doing a huge disservice to history. I also appreciated that the director gave a different "feel" to this story, longer, drawn out, and serious. Less dramatic music. No flashy scenes with "let's show awesome action". No gratuitous action or violence. All this gave a serious gravity to the movie that I appreciated greatly. It's a serious story.

Definitely worth watching by those who appreciate history. Don't watch this if you're looking for entertainment. I only wish they had shown more, such as more post-raid story. And is there a director's commentary for this film? I couldn't find it on the BD that I rented, and doing research, it doesn't look like one exists.

:45: out of :5:

[Ovation]

No commentary for this film exists (at least, not yet--maybe for a 10th anniversary release). It is frustrating when commentaries are absent from cinematic history films (especially to my ongoing research in the field) but there's not much to be done about it except hoping one will emerge eventually.

[Ovation]

Just watched this today. Visually and in terms of acting, a superb piece of work. Jessica Chastain is, as ever, outstanding (and even though it's not that kind of movie--astonishingly beautiful [but I've always had a weakness for redheads]).

As for the story, I found the overall narrative a bit disappointing. I think this may have to do with the fact that the film was greenlit before Bin Laden was actually found and killed, so there was probably a bit more dramatic tension between Maya's point of view and that of her superiors. We know Maya (really a stand-in for about half a dozen women collectively known as "the Sisterhood", according to a recent article I've read on the subject--the reference is at my office and I'm not, sorry) is correct because we know how things turned out and that deflates some of the dramatic tension. Still a very good film, and an excellent performance by Chastain, but I think Bigelow's earlier film, The Hurt Locker, is a better movie. Just my two cents.

The one part that did create suspense despite knowing the outcome was the raid itself--that was handled quite well and I strongly appreciated the low-level lighting (almost all films have WAY too much light in night scenes that should be dark--audiences tend to roll with it because they've been conditioned to do so for a century, but now that camera tech exists to work in natural (or nearly so) low-level lighting, I find such brightness a bit distracting in other films).

[Chris D]

Dan, agree about redheads. As for the Hurt Locker, I don't know which one I like better. Probably Hurt Locker as well.