Hmm over-hyped and riding on the coat tails of Hurt Locker

Rating: 5/10 (27 January 2013)

What is this film about? One woman's crusade to find and kill OBL. Why is she so determined? We don't know, we don't see any personal connection. She didn't volunteer, she was assigned. Why? Because she's a killer apparently - we only have by way of dialogue, we see nothing else to back that up, other than her determination to catch him.
The first 30 or so minutes (difficult to tell, it felt a lot longer) was full of indistinguishable or undecipherable Arabic names being flung around during interrogations, questionings or in meetings in that "realistic" way of portraying conversation i.e. you can't understand anything. Note to Directors as a whole - just because you know the names your actors are spouting in that mumbling, talking over each other way, doesn't mean that we, the audience can hear them or differentiate them. Try directing with the audience in mind next time.
A lot has been said about the use of torture to illicit information and was this film sanctioning it. Well by now we're seen water boarding all over the place, in other movies and even on TV dramas. The level of torture depicted in this movie was not shocking at. I learnt nothing new about the lengths we went to try and get information. If you want to see what lengths you could possibly go to, watch The Unthinkable.
And as for the Director, Hurt Locker announced her brilliantly to the movie world. I think she only got this gig because of it. Whilst everything was directed competently, she has a habit of signalling when something is going to happen.
SPOILER ALERTS When the friendly source comes to the base it is obvious something is going to happen beyond what was hoped by the intelligence people.
Or when our heroine is filmed leaving her apartment and exchanging pleasantries with her security guard, you knew something was going to happen, otherwise why are we seeing such detail?
That said, there was one scene that took me by surprise, but maybe that was because I didn't recall the Marriott 2008 bombing.
Overall I found it too long and too unclear. The only people I felt any concern for were the Canaries, and we all know they survived anyway.
What have we learnt from this film? That it took one woman's tenacity to track down OBL. Is that it???? Hardly worth the effort to make it or indeed watch it.