Review: "Zero Dark Thirty"

This weekend I saw Zero Dark Thirty as part of my campaign to see all Oscar-nominated movies before the Awards ceremony. You may remember myself mentioning that Zero Dark Thirty will most certainly win the Academy Award for Best Picture because of both its timeliness and the fact Kathryn Bigelow won the award for Best Picture in 2009 for The Hurt Locker. I can now say, after seeing the film, that it lived up to my expectations and will most definitely be the Best Picture of the Year. The film follows CIA rookie Maya (Jessica Chastain) as she goes to Pakistan to work at the US Embassy is Islamabad, with the goal of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden. The film follows her as she attempts to find "Abu Ahmed," a well-known terrorist with links to bin Laden, to her following leads with the help of CIA surveillance, the discovery of the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the final raid on the compound by SEAL Team Six (sidenote: one of the SEALs is played by Chris Pratt, better known to viewers of NBC's Parks and Recreation as dimwit Andy Dwyer). This is one of several movies of the year where we know the ending; it joins Argo and Lincoln are two others. However, what makes Zero Dark Thirty so compelling is how Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal make the film and show the process of hunting down bin Laden. The movie is very tense, especially in the scenes of waterboarding and other forms of torture, are executed on captured terrorists. Interestingly enough, there are exactly zero "Yeah, America!" moments, even during the final raid scene. This is okay; if you want a propaganda Navy SEAL film, go watch Act of Valor and stop reading this review right now. In terms of themes, the movie explores several, notably obsession in desperation, in terms of the manhunt. We spent ten years and billions of dollars to catch a single man, who committed an atrocious act. Yes, September 11th, 2001 hit home with us Americans; it was an act of war, no question. What Zero Dark Thirty does is provoke the audience to think, separating it from the mass of mindless military films. I also commend the acting of Jessica Chastain as fictional character Maya. While not real, she is developed seamlessly as the film progresses, from a soft rookie to a focused "single-tasker" fixed on catching bin Laden. I think in this way she symbolizes America post 9/11, as we became increasing fixated on capturing or killing bin Laden. Even the little things, like the bureaucracy of the Department of Defense and the CIA, make the film worth seeing. Some other interesting tidbits throughout the movie are its use of advanced technology. From the bizarre night-vision goggles, to the aerial drones and stealth helicopters, the phone tracking software, I was amazed by the types of technology utilized by the military in their search.
Now, the film has attracted partisan criticism, as well as audience criticism for its accuracy as to how well the film corresponds to what really happened in the manhunt for bin Laden. More often than not, the film is being compared to the firsthand SEAL account No Easy Day by Mark Owen. While I do not wish to become overly immersed in such arguments, I will say this: Zero Dark Thirty, much like Argo, is a dramatization, not a documentary. It's been fictionalized and beefed up by Boal and Bigelow to make it entertaining for an audience. Anyone who judges this movie entirely based on its historical accuracy is ignoring the finer dramatic and storytelling points made in the film.

Consensus: Zero Dark Thirty is a lean, visceral thriller rife with symbolism, character development, and perfectly captions the anger-ridden desperation of the American hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Rating: 5/5