What a Story

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2013)

What a story. And what a storyteller! Katheryn Bigelow is now among my top 5 working directors. Who'd have thought you could balance sensitivity with brutality in one movie and in one actress, Jessica Chastain, who's Maya is the feminine version of Jeremy Renner's William James in "The Hurt Locker". Casting couldn't have been better.
Bigelow probably had a feminist (as opposed to feminazi) agenda for doing this, a motivation well placed in this case, what with the focus on Maya who is the heart of the story in the eye of the storm, and the prime mover behind keeping the CIA in the hunt. The story takes your from phone recordings on 9-11, through the 10 intervening years and the near real-time portrayal of the operation, to the perfect ending with Maya in the C-130. For me, this closes the book on the 9-11 event (some would say closure), while at the same time helping us never to forget what the whole thing was about and that Al Quaeda is still out there--re: Benghazi. This ought to shore up the fears so many directors have of sticking to the history, using research to fill out the story and the characters instead of fabrications which usually end up being disappointing.
The political accusations from both sides prior to its release are near nil after they moved the wide release to Jan 11. I saw one pro and one con element and they were both muted. It's showing now in only one theater in metro Phoenix, and the two screens showing it had the parking lot overflowing by 2-3 times what I'd ever seen there before at night, much less mid-afternoon. My ONLY negative is the absent or nearly unnoticeable music. I'm giving it a 10/10, but if they'd have let me pick the music to play over the credits ("Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue"), I'd be giving it an 11.
For me this closes out 2012 for any award considerations, leaving this in contention with my other 10, "Life of Pi". It's a tossup, art vs. grit.