Chastain and Bigelow are living proof that gender has no part of who can make effective films in certain genres.

Rating: 8/10 (6 September 2015)

Kathryn Bigelow seems to have found herself a niche in thrilling, gripping War on Terror films. I absolutely relish her masterful The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty is as fine a companion piece as can be found.
Inevitably for a film about a decade-long manhunt, the first third (with false leads and an overwhelming sense of helplessness) drags mercilessly. The first time I ever watched this film, I turned it off thirty-five minutes in and went to sleep, before I came back to it and was blown away by the far better paced and high stakes second and third acts. A series of explosions are catalysts in the film - I just love the way Bigelow does explosions. Its all dust and vibration, no excess of flames that would make it feel like a Michael Bay or a Roland Emmerich. Its understated and thoroughly believable.
Pacing or not, Bigelow is a master director. She knows how to film tension and pain like no one I've ever seen. Her cutting between the lead up to the bombing of Camp Chapman and Maya's instant messaging screen to her friend is so brutally effective its almost sadistic. The storming of bin Laden's complex is so well directed that I was taken out of the film and put there in real life - only when Maya appears back on screen did I remember this was a film. Zero Dark Thirty is very much a sum-of-all-parts film, and the film's cinematography, sound, visuals and editing comes together spectacularly. Above all else, I can feel Bigelow's mark on the film, just as I can in The Hurt Locker. I maintain to this day that the 2012 Oscars accidentally nominated the 5-9th Best Directors instead of 1-5, because the omission of Bigelow (and Affleck, Hooper and Tarantino) is inexcusable.
Jessica Chastain is a powerful actress - probably my favourite working today - and she's in her element here. Not many actresses could turn from a loveably ditzy housewife to a determined woman seeking to find and kill the world's number one terrorist. See one scene in which Chastain screams at her Station Chief for the single reason why she got a well- deserved Oscar nomination. But unlike Jennifer Lawrence, who undeservedly took home Oscar gold that year, Chastain's performance is impressive beyond one shouting scene. I fully believed that Chastain - who is a stunning actress - was a withdrawn, friendless obsessive with certainly no husband prospects. I completely bought into her reactions as the culmination of her life's work leaves her without a sense of direction. She completely earned her Golden Globe, and its tragic that she lost the Oscar to Lawrence.