An exhilarating man-hunt phenomenon.

Rating: 7/10 (13 January 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty is possibly another great breakthrough film by director Kathryn Bigelow. It's about the hunt for the infamous terrorist Osama bin laden, which was dead as we all know. The purpose of marketing this film is because of how nerve-wracking it was to know that Bin Laden is finally been dealt with and people would be eager to find out on how did the ambush became successful. Like myself, I am eager to explore the dangers and the accomplishments that the Americans risked to be involved in the most successful manhunt in the US history.
The film is not only great at dramatization purpose, it's also great journalism. The film starts with a concise dash of the 9/11 bombing which was lately rumored that Bin Laden was on play. Then two years later, a lone-wolf CIA agent named Maya (Jessica Chastain) is focusing solely on the al-Qaeda who has spent her entire career for it. She is assigned to work with Dan (Jason Clarke) on a black site in Pakistan to interrogate Anmar (Reda Kateb) to who has several links with Saudi Arabian bombings.
Chastain's uses her acute awareness of every facial expression and vocal intonation to humanize and add authenticity to a defiant, hard-nosed CIA analyst who tells the US Secretary of Defense, "I'm the mot***r who found this place (Bin Laden's hideout)."
Maya is not a young woman you would care to have a dinner conversation with but she does have a no bullsh*t attitude needed to hunt down the elusive Bin Laden in a country she offhandedly describes as "kinda all f***ed up".
Over the course of the decade long manhunt, Maya transforms into a post 9/11 Captain Ahab of sorts. According to the movie's director, Maya is a fictional character partly based on a CIA operative that led the US Navy Seal team that killed Bin Laden.
Zero Dark Thirty is directed by Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow and written by Marc Boal, the same team behind 2008's The Hurt Locker. There has been controversy that the duo received "top-level access to the most classified information in history" as well as over the film's graphic use of torture from sexual humiliation, waterboarding, confinement in a tiny box to bloodied beatings.
Several inaccuracies in the portrayal of enhanced interrogation techniques have been cited by a CIA veteran and concerns have been raised that the movie promotes the use of torture. Bigelow has responded to these criticisms stating that depiction of torture is not an endorsement and reiterated Boal's comment that the movie is "not a documentary".
Screenwriter Marc Boal does a commendable job of condensing 10 years of intelligence gathering into a 2 ½ hour thriller. Though the first half of the movie does stretch a bit too long, the momentum immediately picks up once Maya locates the courier who leads the CIA to a compound in Pakistan.
It's fascinating how the CIA exhausted all possibilities in their attempt to determine the identity of an unknown third adult male living in the compound. The CIA considered obtaining DNA, such as from a toothbrush, but all the garbage was burnt. When their target stepped outside for fresh air, he was always hidden under the cover of thick leaves in the garden. They even started a vaccination program and sent a doctor to the house to get blood samples.
It's interesting to note that this movie was in development for many years and that the ending was rewritten due to the successful mission last May that killed the al Qaeda leader. The last half hour of the movie, as the US Navy Seals assaulted the hideout in the dead of night, is an incredibly riveting and suspenseful movie experience even when we know how it ends. It's hard to imagine how else the movie could have concluded.
However, above all else, the only memorable moment of the film is the final payoff, no doubt about that. Many viewers will think of this as just a predictable notion of a movie where Bin Laden will die. It's hard to make a film about something that just happened which makes the resulting action inevitable, but the whole narrative is compelling and less jaded despite this criticism.
The death of Bin Laden brings a certain sense of closure to Americans as well as for Maya having spent a decade of her life hunting the world's most wanted terrorist. In the final scene, she boards an empty military plane and the pilot asks the lone passenger "Where do you want to go?". She takes a moment for reflection. As she is overcome with emotions and thoughts, tears start to run down her cheeks. So where do we go from here?