worth thinking about

Rating: 8/10 (24 August 2013)

This is the true story of how a young CIA agent worked tirelessly to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, persuading her colleagues and finally getting her man.
Well, not exactly.
This is the story of how our intelligence agencies sifted through mountains of data to find Bin Laden's associates, and then track him down. In the process some people- bad people- were tortured.
Well, sort of.
Zero Dark Thirty is a very smart movie about the hunt for Bin Laden. It features a lovely young redhead named Maya standing in for the faceless agents who did the actual job. Some of it, or all of it, or none of it, is based on actual events.
For most media reviewers, ZDT raised issues about torture- or, as the CIA calls it, enhanced interrogation. There's no denying torture is an integral part of the story here.
Maya's first appearance in Pakistan coincides with the interrogation of Amar, who may be a member of Al Qaida. The interrogator, Dan, tells her 'there's no shame' in watching the torture on a monitor, but she wants to take an active role. As she works with Dan to interview prisoners and follow up leads, she gets a better feel for what's going on in Pakistan and what this assignment will entail.
She catches on quickly. Imbued with an incredible sense of mission, she pushes her more reluctant superiors along Bin Laden's trail. Finally, years of work pay off when a member of her team follows a man to a walled compound that may be the actual hideout. The navy Seals stage a dramatic nighttime attack. One of the casualties is OBL himself.
So, in this version of the story, we tortured the people we had to in order to find Bin Laden.
This is a seductive piece of film making. It doesn't glamorize the tedium of intelligence gathering: trailing suspects, tapping phone calls, reviewing endless blurry videos. There are no cute relationships, no romances; no cartoon violence or action sequences.
It's suspenseful. It pulls out all the stops to create tension in the audience and sympathy for its heroine, who could be blown up at any moment. We're on her side. We want her to succeed in her quest.
And if she uses torture to succeed, are we still with her? We see her doing it; we cheer her on because she doesn't back down, she's as good as the guys.
And it's not like it's really BAD torture. Sure, some Arab guys are beaten, starved, water-boarded, put in a box- but we've all seen more violence in movies.
But these are the good guys we're rooting for. Good guys torture their prisoners?? Are we saying that in a good cause, it's okay?
Are we even claiming it worked? Because half the world is p'd off at us, and it's doubtful that anything of value was learned under torture. One guy even confessed that Sadam Hussein and Bin Laden were plotting together. And we all know how that piece of information worked out.
This is an extremely well-crafted movie. I give it 7 points, plus one more for the portrait of us it leaves to the future. If the rest of the world wants to know how we feel about torturing our enemies, it's all there.