So vile, why wasn't this rated X? Excuse me NC17?

Rating: 6/10 (10 February 2013)

This entire movie reminds me of Michael Douglas's character "Dfens" in "Falling Down", the scene where he is stunned to ask "I'm the bad guy?" This is a very political movie, so by definition, this has to be a very political review. I initially gave this film a 3, because there were some productions values and it was thought provoking, but upon reflection, it is thought provoking in a negative way. As you know Islamic extremists have launched a number of attacks on Western civilians. In response, the government created a "war on terror" to find and murder the people responsible. The Bush Adminisration was ineffective probably because it worked to their benefit and allowed them to pursue 2 wars and destroy American's civil liberties. But there was no discussion of that. There was no discussion of why the Islamists are attacking the west. Is it because of our economic polices that were hurting them? Was it because of their religious beliefs? This movie does not even attempt to address these issues or many others. There are extreme depictions of torture, but no comment on the fact that torture does not work. In fact, in this investigation, all of the torture (and there was a lot of it) produced very little good information.
What we have is a pro-government, rah-rah movie. If it wasn't pro-government, it would have been rated NC-17, largely banned. Two people making love can't be seen, but torturing a Muslim, well take the kiddies. The problem is the final result was it shows our government as being the "bad guys". Just because the Islamists are evil, does that mean that its OK for us to be evil? Again, the movie does not care about that ethical issue. All that matters is that "we" win. Rah!
I only went to see it because of the hype. Oscars? Eww, that would diminish the Oscars, as well as our nation. On top of that it wasn't even a good movie. I came out of Les Miserable uplifted, Zero Dark 30, made me depressed and disgusted. Yes fighting terrorists is nasty business, but we should at least acknowledge that we have sunk so low as a result of their tactics. There was no mention of that.