Tense from start to finish

Rating: 8/10 (8 January 2013)

Jessica Chastain as Maya the lead character in the film does a thoroughly professional job as a CIA operative obsessed with the tracking down of the most wanted man in the world and willing to break a few eggs to make an omelet as the saying goes. The film relies heavily on actual terrorists incidents to move the story along, starting with the communications traffic that occurred in real time as 9/11 was occurring and then abruptly moving to secret off-site locations where the CIA interrogated captured terrorists suspected of being involved in 9/11. The torture scenes are not for the faint of heart and are of course the most controversial part of the movie. The movie makes the premise that torture does indeed work and that in fact it did occur, as reported by actual CIA personnel. Whether you agree with torture as a tactic or not, the scenes are hard to watch and uncomfortable. It is difficult to reconcile the horror of 9/11 with the horror that the United States of America will resort to torture to get the information it desperately wants. From the opening torture scenes the movie moves along to other major terrorist incidents that were world-wide headlines including the bus and train attacks in London, the bombing of the Marriott in Islamabad, and the attack on CIA agents at a base in Afghanistan. Parallel to the real events depicted in the movie are the use of electronic snooping to look for leads as to the whereabouts of BinLaden. The movie does a good job of showing the painstaking process of getting leads and piecing them together to provide a larger narrative. Finally as we all know they found the location of OBL and the last fourth of the movie covers that actual mission by the Navy Seals. The screenplay was excellent overall with the exception of some silly dialog related to potential boyfriends and there may have been some exaggeration of the dialog for dramatic effect but it makes the movie enjoyable and at certain points funny. This is one of the best movies of the year and a must see. Jessica Chastain adds to her already impressive resume.