Review 207: Zero Dark Thirty

I honestly don't know how to soften the blow on this so I'll just come straight out with it: Zero Dark Thirty just never took off for me.

For a decade following the the September 11 attacks, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devote themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate bin Laden.

The problem with this film is that the storytelling is heartless as well as unbearably and unapologetically cold to a fault, the characters are really unlikeable and the film as a whole is completely devoid of emotion. There's never a reason to care about these people because they're so one note.

 

all I saw was unlikeable Americans torturing poor terrorists which doesn't help their case at being better than them.

I realise that this movie is supposed to be tough and hard-hitting given its subject matter and that it falls into the subcategory of "Post 9/11" drama. But at some point we expect it to benefit from people we actually sympatheise with and want to suceed in this hunt. It would have been nice if we were treated to some characters to root for and when something happened to them we would feel some emotional tug. Which doesn't happen to often.

The other main problem is that screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow

 

When our heroes consist of C.I.A operatives who act so coldly, ruthlessly and almost Terminator-like, here's what I think: Why should I care about these people? They're willing to manipulate anybody they can for intel and are willing to engage in gratuitous torture so essentially they're no better than the people that they're fighting.

What Zero Dark Thirty amounts to is a bunch of unwatchable torture porn and a lot of preachy statements that ultimately ring hollow about what is regarded as a gruling manhunt for a very dangerous individual.

Our protagonist Maya (Jessica Chastain) is obsessed with finding bin Laden. Her single minded ferocity and stubbornness are the films primary driving force but the film focuses so much on it to the point where it becomes preachy because Maya thinks she is right - and she is but that doesn't mean we should be forced to take that at face value.

Whatsmore, I came out of the movie feeling empty and it left me unbelievably cold and unfulfilled. I felt like I hadn't learnt anything from this film, I felt like it hadn't shown me the epic search for bin Laden,
I never got a sense of the struggles the government faced during the search, the pain from all the losses, and instead all I saw was some random, emotionless Americans whom I don't care about stopping at nothing to find some random terroist whom I also don't care about.

This film has generated controversy, both for graphic portrayal of torture of suspects and for what is described by some as a misleading portrayal of torture as critical to the United States' success in gaining information on bin Laden's associates and location.
In addition, Republicans have suggested that the filmmakers were given improper access to classified materials, which they and the Obama administration denied 

Director Kathryn Bigelow dirction is painfully stolid, she seems to want to direct an almost 10 year long story and I got the feeling she found it hard to handle, the cinematography is , the score is dreary and not up to composer Alexandre Desplat's usual standards, the production design is  costumes are raged, the dialogue is terrible, the make up is rich
The pacing is unbearably slow to the point of being depressing. torture are...  well the only word to use is overkill and

To be honest the acting fairly one-note throughout the course of the film, Jessica Chastain  play a character as emotionally distant and cut off as CIA analyst Maya, it didn't feel natural in any way. Chastain has stated that Maya is a woman whose practically married to her job, she doesn't let any distractions get in the way of her mission. The film never explores why Maya is so hell bent on capturing bin Laden. We never get to see what's going inside her head. There has to be something that Maya genuinly does care about for us as an audience to relate to. But Maya has no such attachments.

Here is a "person" so singleminded, stubborn, driven and determined to find bin Laden that it gets to the point where she's married to her job.

I can't bring myself to care for Jennifer Ehle's senior CIA analyst Jessica who exists sourly to die. Jason Clarke does nothing but beat up terrorists, Mark Strong mostly shouts, Kyle Chandler does nothing at all, 

James "Tony Soprano" Gandolfini, John "Cap. Jack Harkness" Barrowman and Stephen "Stannis Baratheon" Dillane also show up at various points in the film playing authoritative figures with Barrowman, in particular, only appearing in a few shorts scenes that could have been left on the cutting room floor. I actually read in an interview with Barrowman whilst he was promoting the CW hit superhero series Arrow that he had more scenes in the film but they were unfortunately left on the cutting room floor. That didn't work out either.

Elsewhere, Joel Egerton, Frank Grillo, Mike Colter and Parks and Rec's Chris Pratt, Chicago's Taylor Kinney and Callan Mulvey round out the cast in bit parts as Navy SEALs

Critics may say Zero Dark Thirty is one of the best movies of 2012, but trust me for the most part it's to be avoided, 2/5.

The Anonymous Critic.