Review of Zero Dark Thirty

Rating: 8/10 (15 April 2013)

Review of Zero Dark Thirty
Zero Dark Thirty was a film about the events up to and the raid on Bin Laden's compound. The movie showed a re-creation of interrogations, training, and the raid on the compound. The film took many facts of the situations that it depicted and twisted them in ways that would over exaggerate it. Zero Dark Thirty's facts and legitimacy is scrutinized and compared to books such as Mark Owen's No Easy Day and Peter Bergen's Manhunt.
Zero Dark Thirty's plot was greatly put together. The entire film followed many of the most important events leading up to the raid on Osama's compound. The film showed the interrogations and how they got information from some of the most important terrorist. The interrogations were graphic and had shown exactly how and actually interrogation would have gone. These scenes are what make the film great, how graphic it is, and the accuracy.
The movie exaggerates the facts compared to the other two books by a wide margin. In one case, during the raid "Prince 51" actually known as "Chalk 1" in the actual mission it crashes and is angled off the ground. In the movie, the helicopter is claimed to be 10 feet off the ground, as in No Easy Day the helicopter is 6 feet off the ground. The 4 feet may not seem like it makes much of a difference, but when you have to jump from the helicopter that 4 feet can make a difference of shattering a knee or landing and rolling.
Zero Dark Thirty was a well written movie, with a great plot and storyline. Some of the scenes depicted in the movie were very accurate, while others were exaggerated. This film is a well written movie but since it takes facts and stretches them, this film would get 4.5 stars out of 5.