Zero Dark Thirty

As the Oscars draw near, the controversy of this movie is getting out of hand. Is the movie pro-torture? Does showing torture automatically mean that a movie endorses torture? Blah blah blah. Of course your reading on what is being shown vs what is being endorsed will depend on your political leanings. That feels secondary to me when it comes to fictional retellings of realistic events. Do we want the movie to be exact? Or do we want the movie to entertain/challenge us? Or do we want something compeltely different? I do not really have a straight line answer for that. I do know that reading about this movie before I saw it just exhausted me. I needed to see for myself what all of the hype was about. I have to admit, my excitement for Zero Dark Thirty had many peaks and valleys. I was very excited when I first heard about it, then after the teaser, I was not as excited, but the full length trailer got me excited again. However, that exhaustion had set in around the time I was finally getting to see it, so my expectations were not as high as they once were.

Maya(Jessica Chastain) is a woman on a mission: to find Osama Bin laden. That is her calling and she spends a decade doing everything she can to find him. She enters this mission as someone with not many credits to her name, but some of the other field agents are not really sure she has what it takes to be in the field because being in the field means witnessing some pretty heinous torture. Circa 2002-2008, agents in the field were routinely torturing prisoners to find information and the first 30 minutes of this movie shows some pretty hard to watch torture led by Dan, a long time agent who is so desensitized to everything. After years and years, Maya has been holding onto one lead: a messenger who is thought to go between Osama and the leaders of various sects. This is her link and she is going to follow it until it produces fruit. The problem is, the CIA is moving on from the search because there are other threats, but Maya is not going to budge. This is what she has been working for for nearly a decade and she believes she is closing in on Osama's location. Once she believes she has located where he is hiding, she is met with serious resistance from the higher-ups. They do not want to make a move without 100% proof and they cannot get it, so for over 100 days they sit on this property doing nothing. Maya knows Osama is there, but she can do nothing about it but bug her boss to make a move. We know the history the film portrays, so it is not shocking that the higher-ups finally relent and the house taken and Osama is found and killed.

Zero Dark Thirty feels like 3 movies: The first act is full of torture and has a slower, but not boring pace. Act 2 is this very episodic almost procedural film that really drags and then the third act is this intense, white knuckle chase film shot in near complete night vision. Kathryn Bigelow, who directed one of the most intense movies ever (The Hurt Locker) does not hit it out of the park for me with this film. There is something just so, whatever to me about roughly half of this movie. The pacing feels a bit too sluggish to really get the intensity of the end to feel immediate. That being said, there are some high points. Bigelow does certainly know how to build up to a big moment. There is this super intense sequence involving a possible informant that really leaves you with this mix of on the edge of your seat and burying your face out of concern for what you think may happen and feel powerless to do anything about it. In fact, Bigelow knows how to do action. I am over a week away from seeing it and the things I remember most are the action sequences. There is the hotel explosion, the gun attack on Maya and of course, that great climatic sequence. However, everything else kind of felt lethargic for me.

Now the movie ultimately lives and dies with Jessica Chastain as she is in roughly 90% of the movie and that turns out to work in Zero Dark Thirty's favor because she is mesmerizing. Chastain's Maya is tough, smart, and entirely too composed, which is what makes the few times she falls apart even more memorable. Chastain can do a lot with just her body language and the character has to stand up to some pretty intimidating guys and she holds her own. Kyle Chandler (an absolute favorite of mine) has a nice supporting role, but when he gets usurped by Chastain, the movie takes off on a whole other level because that is when you really start to see the fight in Maya. Chastain has done amazing work in a very short amount of time and is quickly becoming a favorite actress of mine. I remember thinking she was too pretty to pull off something like this, but she is more than up to the challenge. The movie falters a bit, but it is never because of her. All of the acting work is great. It is always nice to see Chris Pratt in pretty much anything. He adds a sense of lightness, even if only momentarily,and Joel Edgerton adds a strong quiet presence. As usual, Mark Strong lends gravitas to a supporting role.

Now the big question: Does the movie endorse torture? Eh, no it does not. It shows what was happening during the that time and it did not prove entirely effective either. The scenes of torture are incredibly tough to watch, and the movie is not out to make apologies for them nor is it saying "Yay torture!" It is merely saying, these things happened in our quest to capture the guy who was behind the 9/11 attacks. Bigelow does a very great job at not exploiting the pain of 9/11 for dramatic effect and I definitely appreciated that. 9/11 is shown very briefly, but mostly in a complete black out with only sound. She knows we do not need those images in our head to remember what happened that day.

The climatic chase/shoot out is as intense as I had hoped more of the movie had been. Quick movements, loud gun shots, shadowy figures, limited scope of vision and loud screams and shouts dominate the finale and it does leave you in a state of intense catharsis. I know that is a bit of an oxymoron but that is how I felt. I believe that the climax is what will follow you when the film ends. it is probably best that way because there is too much that feels like filler, like a super broad episode of Law and Order. People trying to gather evidence, but showing every single bit of it in the middle section. Chastain is does phenomenal work, but the movie itself falls just flat for me.

Final Grade: B