Odd mix of the serious and Hollywood action movie clichés. 75%

Rating: 7/10 (12 February 2013)

"Zero dark thirty" is quite a dry movie and its endgame looks like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Presumably you are well aware of the resolution to this tale - the execution of Usama bin Laden - but are more interested in how his demise came about. In broad-brush strokes, this movie tells that story. One issue I had with this movie was just being baffled about who the terrorist suspects were...I feel that an actual documentary would just have a greater feeling of coherence as to how all the pieces of this 'jigsaw' puzzle fit together. Sometimes it wasn't even clear to me what was happening...as with that sequence where a Middle-Eastern looking man is fitted up with...something...and notices women (?) in full Muslim cover around him.
Jessica Chastain stars as "Maya", a crucial C.I.A. operative in the hunt for U.B.L. At the start of the movie she comes across as being a work experience would be torturer or something and progresses to following the script on the strategy to get information from detainees. I'm not exactly sure what Maya's position title in the C.I.A. was, but she does appear to have more clout than her seniority would dictate.
I am curious if many of the comments she makes actually happened. It's these moments of bravado or vulgarity which make this movie come across as some sort of Hollywood action movie...Maya's dialogue is along the lines of something you would expect Eddie Murphy to utter in "Beverly Hills cop" or Bruce Willis in "Die hard". They didn't really ring true to me. Fair enough if she actually said this, but hopefully these weren't inventions to make the movie function as a C.I.A. recruiting ad. Other times Maya looks like a sitcom character or a Little Princess having a hissy fit. I have in mind that part of the movie where Maya writes numbers ostentatiously in lipstick on her superior's window. Again, fair enough if this actually happened, but if not, it just seems a clumsy way to make Maya look "sassy" or...whatever.
For a while I made a point of not reading reviews of this movie or articles which delved into it and the topic of torture. That was short lived. Before watching this movie I did read a couple of articles, one a review, I think, and one on the topic of torture. What I saw on the screen was not particularly horrific...I was perhaps expecting some stomach-churning gore as you might see (implied) on the TV drama "24", as practiced by the anti-terrorism agent Jack Bauer. There was nothing so bad as that...which is not to say that the torture you do see inflicted by the C.I.A. is not horrific if you imagined yourself being subject to it. It's just not horrific, in other words.
From my own point of view, I think there is one issue which is relevant which the movie does not cover...all the times that torture was inflicted on people who were actually innocent. In the movie, the tortured were always guilty, so "the end justifies the means", one could argue. If we saw depicted horrific torture which was of no purpose, our views on the practice could be challenged.
One of the articles that I read was "Tortured justifications" by Waleed Aly in The Age newspaper (07/02/2013?). His view was that since director Kathryn Bigelow got most of her information from the C.I.A., the movie is pretty much supports what they did. Before I had watched the movie, I did read Bigelow's article where she said depicting the torture in the movie was not condoning it. Years ago I watched a very interesting documentary called "Operation Hollywood" which outlined how movies which used U.S. military props or whathaveyou were subject to censorship by the U.S. military...in other words, they got to say how they were depicted...for instance, they insisted a story element from "Lassie" be removed...one which implied that the U.S. military might make defective products. The point of raising all this is just to suggest that I hope Bigelow isn't a C.I.A. dupe or apologist...the former charge being more serious, perhaps.
In any case, the torture was not that big of an issue for me. And I had even less problems with the U.S. taking the action it did against U.B.L. without authorisation from the sovereign nation (Pakistan) where he had been 'hiding'.
Points of interest:
* I did find the actions of one C.I.A. woman in this movie incredibly stupid (naive at best), which had devastating consequences for U.S. citizens...the one where she does not follow strict protocol.
* Was it necessary to shoot (kill?) U.B.L's wife? * I get the impression that a British actor played the role of a senior (government?) figure in this movie...and I wasn't convinced he was an American...I would have guessed it was the guy from "The thick of it" who swears a lot (I've not seen that series though)...but looks like I'm wrong on that.
* Usama bin Laden is referred to as "UBL" by the Americans...I had read somewhere that the U.S. made a point of spelling his name "Osama" as they didn't like the fact that he had "USA" in his name (i.e. "Usama"). So, it's interesting that they call him "UBL" for that reason. Calling him "Osama" in general thus seems like a propaganda move.
* Surprised to see two Australians in this movie...the Edgerton brothers.
Personally, I would really like to see a movie or documentary concerning the events following 11/09/2001...the fact that the president of the U.S. (George W. Bush) ignored all evidence of Saudi Arabian involvement (the Bush family had lucrative relationships with Saudi royalty, I think, who were implicated in the attacks on U.S. soil in 2001. He also waged war on a nation not involved in those attacks on U.S. soil...as a useful diversion since Saudi Arabia was implicated?