Torture can be ... boring

Rating: 1/10 (10 February 2013)

I looked around the movie theater. The audience was very 'ethnically homogeneous'. Only Danes. I could write about that in my review, I thought. But then two girls seated themselves. One of them wore a headscarf. The other girl wore no headscarf, but she had dark pigmentation.
The film begins with a series of desperate phone calls from WTC. Then it cuts directly to the film's first interrogation scene. The beautiful heroine is visibly shaken by watching the torture, but when she is offered to follow it at a distance through a monitor, she bravely refuse. Not only that, she also goes into the torture chamber without being masked. The male torturer humiliate the prisoner by dragging his pants down. A closeup of the face clearly shows how hard this is to watch for the poor female heroine. The torture victim exploits her weakness and asks her to make the torture end. She pulls herself together and explains to the prisoner - and to the audience - that he can get the torture to stop if he starts talking.
The heroine is what you might call a politically correct torturer; she tortures because she is ever so dedicated, and weeps afterwards.
To show who the baddies are, there is a suicide bomb going off at random intervals. The beautiful heroine can't have a cup of coffee at a café without it exploding, nor is it possible for her to get out of her driveway without suddenly being shot at. One could easily get the idea that the director have added yet another explosion each time the test audiences have complained about the movie being utterly boring. Explosions or not -- Zero Dark Twenty is really an exceptionally dull ride.
The film is mostly an office drama that focuses on the female protagonists status compared to that of her male colleagues. It's all very cliché. There were scattered giggles in the theater at the most corny one-liners. The movie even have that stupid scene where the heroine earns respect by shouting at her boss. It shows she have character, you know. Next time your boss is being stupid, try to screaming at him hysterically. You'll probably get a raise.
At the end of the film, the beautiful female torturer start crying again. While she was busy being all emotional, parts of the audience started to gather their stuff and heading for the exit. The two girls was among them. Most of the audience waited for the credits.
The film was over. There was the typical noise of coats being picked up and Coca Cola cups being crushed. A guy in the seat in front commented: "I just can't wait for the sequel!"