Insanely well done

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2013)

Who knew that the director of Point Break would make one of the best films I have seen so far. You thought the Hurt Locker was good.
Now the Hurt Locker when I saw it, I couldn't find a story out of it. This movie is based on true events, so there is an excess of story. The actual manhunt for UBL goes back to the Clinton administration in the late 90s. The story here actually starts in 2003, and the screenplay does a good job in actually keeping the progression of the plot pretty linear. You can actually keep up with it and it trims a lot of the excess information. The movie focused solely on one narrative from the point of view of a single CIA agent who is obsessed with finding a certain courier.
Now the actress who plays the CIA agent is very solid, I really enjoyed her screen presence. She really convinces you that she is thorough, dedicated and methodical and at the same time you still notice that she is hot. And the supporting cast were pretty good too.
You will also notice that some of the lines are kind of cheesy or the delivery of them were cheesy. For example 'he is one of the disappeared ones','I'm the mother****er who found the compound', 'what convinced you? (guy waves his hands around) her confidence' or 'I'm not your friend. I'm here to break you'. Seriously we didn't need lines for the trailer.
The authenticity is what really struck me. I am kind of suspicious as to how production manage to reproduce the surveillance footage of the compound. Hmm. Also the torture scenes, wow, they really make you uncomfortable. Is the film pro or anti-torture? Or is it that they just want to present you with the hard truth? Still the director decided to take some artistic liberties, such as the depiction of the Marriott bombing, which you will see what I'm talking about or actually notifying the SEALs who their target is days before takeoff to name a few.
Speaking of which the last half hour is intense. We all know what happens so this isn't really a spoiler. The realism of the event was phenomenal, showing every maneuver and breach etc. So if your expecting some sort of Rambo like shoot out... umm no.
What I actually really liked about this film was that it really didn't on the religious aspect that much, in fact barely at all. Generally films about Islamic terrorism like Executive Decision, The Siege, Body of Lies and The Kingdom always have this message of religious tolerance. This movie, like me, doesn't care about that at all. It just outlines who the bad guys are and how they operate. It doesn't explore the topic of their ideological motivations that much, but in one or two scenes they do talk about their financial motivations.
All in all this is a really well done, gritty production and I don't think personally it glorifies or antagonizes anyone. It just shows what happened. OK there maybe a small chance where some guy in the theater may go 'USA! USA!'.