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Jan 2, 2013 · The decision to market “Zero Dark Thirty” as a thriller therefore takes a certain amount of courage, even given the fascination with this most zero and dark of deaths. (The title is spy-speak for “half past midnight,” the time of bin Laden’s death.)
Gripping, suspenseful, and brilliantly crafted, Zero Dark Thirty dramatizes the hunt for Osama bin Laden with intelligence and an eye for detail. Read Critics Reviews
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- Kathryn Bigelow
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- Jessica Chastain
Zero Dark Thirty Reviews. All Critics. Top Critics. All Audience. Verified Audience. Danielle Solzman Solzy at the Movies. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal may have meant well but make no mistake...
It's a good movie. I've seen it twice already and will probably watch it again in the future. Don't know how accurate the portrayal of anything in the movie is, so I can't judge by that. It helps that one of my favourite actresses is the main protagonist of the movie.
- Kathryn Bigelow's hunt for bin Laden drama is one of the best films of 2012.
- Verdict
By Scott Collura
Posted: Dec 19, 2012 8:29 pm
It should be noted that this review discusses the real-world events that Zero Dark Thirty is based on, and therefore might be considered spoilery by some.
Director Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty isn't just great dramatic filmmaking, it's also great journalism -- which is a really weird concept, but there you have it. The film tells the decade-long tale of how a CIA operative slowly, methodically located Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11. In so doing, the movie could've turned into a dry, by-the-books accounting of the humdrum reality and red tape that led up to that fateful raid on bin Laden's Abbottabad compound in May, 2011. But instead, it's one of the best films of the year, a thrilling procedural and study of the labors of obsession.
Bigelow's naturalistic, you-are-there direction, screenwriter Mark Boal's fair and balanced -- if you will forgive the term -- take on these events (informed by research and interviews with the real people involved in the search), and deep, believable performances across the board combine in such a way that Zero Dark Thirty will have you sweating it out by the final reel as if you, too, are about to walk into that compound with SEAL Team Six. Seriously, my heart was pounding as the two Black Hawk helicopters soared through the mountain range between Afghanistan and Pakistan on their way to bin Laden, despite the fact that I, of course, knew exactly how this was all going to end!
But the viewer's blood starts pumping long before that sequence -- right from the get-go, in fact, as we meet Jessica Chastain's Maya, a green CIA op newly arrived at a U.S. "black site" in the Middle East. Apparently not even getting the chance to change out of her inappropriately neat business suit, Maya is quickly introduced to the information gathering -- a.k.a. torture -- techniques of Jason Clarke's hardened interrogator Dan. She watches, clearly troubled, as Dan coaxes, warns, befriends, and then waterboards his al-Qaeda-connected prisoner, all in a matter of minutes. (That Dan, who calls his detainee "bro," also has a Ph.D only drives home how little we really know and understand about what goes on in the war, and who the people are who are fighting it.)Clarke, by the way, is amazing as Dan, who can be as charming as he is monstrous, though the film is Chastain's all the way. These characters, as well as the long parade of familiar faces (Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Edgar Ramirez and James Gandolfini to name just a few) who come and go through this tale, have very little by way of personal lives or the typical movie-character anchors. No spouses, no back story, nothing to drive them but what we see onscreen: A devotion to the job, and in Maya's case -- she's reportedly based on a real person -- a fixation on finding bin Laden that perhaps leaves little room for anything else in her life anyway. She's haunted by the search for her target, even while it changes her. In time, she finds herself matter-of-factly using the same torture techniques as Dan, for example.
Zero Dark Thirty reminds us that sometimes real-life tales make for the best kinds of movies. While there's no way to truly know what led to finding bin Laden, this is probably the closest we’re going to get for some time. It's also next-level filmmaking -- smart, brave and intense, and, hopefully, trendsetting. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Tal...
Movie review of Zero Dark Thirty (2012) by The Critical Movie Critics | Kathryn Bigelow's behind the scenes look at the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.
Zero Dark Thirty: Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. With Jason Clarke, Reda Kateb, Jessica Chastain, Kyle Chandler. A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011.
