On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists launched a devastating attack against the United States using commercial airliners as missiles. On May 1, 2011, after nearly a decade, the mastermind of those attacks, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was killed at his Pakistan compound by members of U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six. Given how powerful these events have been, it is no surprise that Hollywood found its opportunity to release a film based on those events. It’s also not too surprising that this film about the post-9/11 hunt for bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, would be directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Download Zero Dark Thirty As Zero Dark Thirty opens, we are reminded of the atrocities of 9/11 but in a way that isn’t overblown. For the first scene, we see nothing but a black screen, but we hear audio of 911 calls, news reports, and other recordings made on that terrible day. Then, we jump to 2003 when a CIA agent named Dan, played by Jason Clarke, interrogates an al-Qaeda financier. Unfortunately, it’s not easy. As the detainee remains silent, Dan resorts to waterboarding and other methods of torture in an attempt to get vital information about the terrorist network. This is one of the sources of controversy about the film, because it suggests that torture was justified and necessary to find Osama bin Laden. (I have no opinion of this, so my review of the movie isn’t affected in any way by Zero Dark Thirty’s depiction of torture.) Pretty soon, it’s clear who the main character really is: a female CIA agent named Maya. Actress Jessica Chastain, in a solid performance, portrays Maya as someone who can easily be described in just three words: smart, tough, and dedicated. She may smile briefly from time to time when she isn’t working, but once she is in the middle of intelligence gathering and analysis, she maintains a serious no-nonsense demeanor. And when she is told not to pursue whatever lead she is focused on because a recent attack on American interests has shifted priorities within the intelligence community, she will fight to keep doing what she is doing. As the late part of the movie shows, this determination will pay off. Download Zero Dark Thirty The events leading up to the year 2005 mainly involve interviews with individuals connected to al-Qaeda and a few explosive situations that leave some people dead. The movie gets really interesting when it shows events from 2008 and onward. This is where Maya pursues the lead that she’s been looking for. One man may be connected to Osama bin Laden, directly or indirectly, and agents work together to do surveillance of areas in Pakistan where he might be moving around. The effort takes some time, but there’s a big step forward when they discover a walled compound that, as discussed in later intelligence meetings, has some unusual features. This place, as we know from real-life news coverage, is where bin Laden is hiding. The climax of Zero Dark Thirty centering on the Navy SEAL raid of the compound is worth the wait. It’s a fairly accurate reenactment of what this brave military team did, portraying moments of stealth, split-second decisions to fire gunshots, and the confined rooms of the compound. While watching this sequence, I couldn’t help but look back on two things related to the raid. One was an interview with a member of Navy SEAL Team Six on the CBS news program 60 Minutes, in which he described in detail his account of the compound raid and bin Laden’s death. Zero Dark Thirty presented the same details. The other thing was the official White House photo of a room next to the Situation Room where various officials were receiving live updates of the bin Laden raid, including President Barack Obama with a serious expression and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with one hand covering her mouth. The feeling of suspense evident in that photo was very much what I felt during this last part of Zero Dark Thirty. All in all, this is a pretty good movie, certainly better than The Hurt Locker which I thought was average despite its widespread critical acclaim. Putting aside any issues related to content accuracy, I’m pleased that Zero Dark Thirty presents a gripping story as well as a strong main character whom I can identify with. It also gives us another sense of closure for the horrors of 9/11, in addition to that feeling we got the first time upon hearing the news of bin Laden’s death. With all of this, Kathryn Bigelow might soon have a reputation as a skillful director of political and war dramas. If the next big American war takes place and it’s time for a Hollywood film about it, she might be the call. Kathryn Bigelow has had a pretty interesting career, hasn’t she? Before THE HURT LOCKER, her biggest movie was POINT BREAK, which is the kind of thing that everyone likes ironically. It’s even been adapted into a snarky, half-tribute, half-spoof of a stage play called POINT BREAK LIVE. I actually went to see it with some friends a few years ago and it was pretty fun. The best thing about it is that every night, they pull someone out of the audience to play Keanu and have him read his lines off cue cards, while everyone acts around him (or her, I guess, but it was a dude in the one I saw). There are a lot of (harmless) gay jokes with the surfers rubbing suntan lotion on each other, they shot squirt guns at us. You get it. I got off on a tangent there, but the point was that Ms. Bigelow wasn’t always celebrated as a filmmaker. Her biggest movie was a big joke. You don’t see RAGING BULL get that kind of treatment, for example. But there is one thing she was always respected for, and that was for being a female director whose movies weren’t all “womany.” Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact. She made cool horror, action and sci-fi. A lot of her early movies were good, but I can’t say they were great. I liked NEAR DARK, even though that came out too soon after THE LOST BOYS, which—let’s be honest—is the more memorable vampire movie of the era. I guess you could say BLUE STEEL is kind of a chick flick, but it’s got a lot of gun violence in it. STRANGE DAYS wasn’t that great, but it had these really cool, long POV one-shots that showed the kind of chops she had. After that came a couple movies I didn’t really care about at all, and then…well, then came THE HURT LOCKER. I don’t know the story of how she met screenwriter Mark Boal, but it’s a good thing she did, because working together, they are two for two in a big fucking way. Some artists just bring out the best in each other. They can be really good on their own, but it’s when they come together and let their voices compliment each other that they break through into greatness. The biggest problem with ZERO DARK THIRTY is that it’s so similar in style and content to THE HURT LOCKER, that for me, it ends up overshadowing the earlier film, making it feel sort of like a dress rehearsal. That’s pretty crazy, isn’t it? The thing that bothers me most about this movie is that it makes another movie I love seem worse by comparison. I complained a little bit about ARGO and LINCOLN trying to manufacture suspense around an outcome that the audience already knows. Well, this is a movie about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, and…spoiler alert…they get him. But somehow, it was super-tense and exciting and I was on the edge of my seat and all that shit, anyway. I suppose there are a lot of reasons this one works so much better than those other two. The easiest to spot, of course, is that this story is more recent and relevant, more a part of our collective consciousness. But it’s more than that. The style of filmmaking is very journalistic (much like THE HURT LOCKER). I’m not going to say it feels totally authentic, though, because there are a couple of real “movie” type moments in it. Like how Jessica Chastain keeps writing the number of days that have passed since they found the house on her boss’s office window (I know that was a confusing sentence–don’t worry about it). It’s the kind of thing that only happens in movies, even if it happened in real life. There’s a lot of torture at the beginning, but the movie doesn’t take a moral or political stance on it. We see how it affects the characters involved in it, though. Like the part where Jason Clarke leaves Jessica Chastain alone in the room with the subject. We’ve seen her looking disgusted and horrified by what she’s witnessed, so when the guy asks her for help, we expect her to help him or at the very least, show the guy some sympathy. Instead, she goes up to him and says, “You could help yourself by being truthful.” So maybe she doesn’t like the torture, but she accepts it. And later, we see that she desensitizes herself to it and even comes to rely on it. That’s the kinda shit that makes characters complex. They’re allowed to be conflicted about shit like that. They can hate and condone something at the same time. Love it. Later in the movie, Jason Clarke refuses to question (read: “torture”) a guy because he’s being transferred to another position and he’s done with that part of his life. It doesn’t matter if he believes what he’s done in the past was right or wrong, he reached his limit with it. No judgment, he just doesn’t want to do it anymore. He says he needs to do something “normal” and I think we can all understand that, right? Hey, I just realized that Jessica Chastain and Jason Clarke were both them were in LAWLESS this year, too. How about that? And then there’s the end, when they get to the raid. This is done in real time, or close enough to it that it doesn’t matter. It’s probably a half-hour, maybe forty-five minute sequence, and we’re with the team the whole way. You can tell a lot of effort when into getting it right and realistic, forgoing the “movie” temptations. Sometimes they shoot in night vision, sometimes it’s so dark you can barely see what’s going on, it’s fucking awesome. You’re on SEAL Team 6, bitches. Watch your goddamn backs. Okay, obviously I can’t ruin the outcome here, but there’s something about the execution I want to mention, and if you don’t want to know about it, go ahead and skip down to the next paragraph, okay? For the rest of you, you never even see Bin Laden’s face. Not clearly, anyway. And when they get him, it’s just so matter-of-fact, and you don’t even know it was him right away. There’s no drama of seeing him dive across the room for his gun while shouting, “Death to America!” or anything like that. It’s just that you see a shadowy figure run by, one of the guys shoots him, then they all realize it was Bin Laden. Mission accomplished. I will say it was surprising but really great casting to put Chris Pratt from PARKS AND RECREATON in there as one of the SEALs. He’s got such a likeable personality that it transmits to the whole team, humanizing them for us. Excellent choice. So, there you have it. This is easily the most significant and “important” movie of the year, and for me, it’s also easily one of the best. Seriously. I cannot possibly recommend this movie highly enough. As long as you know what you’re in for, then there’s no way you’re not going to like it. It’s a movie that could only fail if the execution were poor, and it’s not. They fucking nailed it. Go see this movie. Now, bitches.
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