The bin Laden Identity

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty will appeal to fans of action movies, and the fact that it is based on true events should complement that appeal. It's an odd- duck movie in that the ending is never in doubt; only the path to the goal. The hunt for the most notorious terrorist of them all, Osama bin Laden, occurs over a ten-year period from the point of view of the Americans and, chiefly, the CIA operative running the operation. It is very compelling, riveting stuff. However, I don't feel that it is a great film; despite a remarkable performance by Jessica Chastain and solid camera work, the movie comes off at its worst as over-the-top jingoism masquerading as patriotism, making America look great to those who wave their arms at how Number One the good ol' USA is, the best of the best, and making America look terrible, perhaps, to those who are not American.
The movie is unflinching in its depiction of violent methods, but we should get one thing clear right away: it's a work of fiction based on true events. Just because something occurs in this film does not mean it happened in real life.
The film is difficult to watch for a couple of main reasons. For one, there is audio of phone calls from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and those alone may raise your hackles. Then there is the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture, and knowing that this sort of thing did go on after 2001 makes for some harrowing viewing.
Here's an interesting comparison for you. Adolph Hitler was a genocidal maniac. When the war was closing in on him, he took his own life, thus depriving his enemies the same satisfaction. Bin Laden, however, did not; he continued to operate remotely, unseen except by the occasional video to al-Jazeera. His mere presence kept people angry, demanding action. Whereas Hitler's death definitively ended WW II, bin Laden's survival began a new one. What if bin Laden, who had been cooped up in the caves in Tora Bora, had killed himself? No war, perhaps, and no real satisfaction on the part of America and its comrades.
Maya (Chastain) is a neophyte operative when she begins the search for bin Laden. She needs to fight bureaucracy and lack of good leads; she travels from Langley (CIA headquarters) to Yemen to Pakistan to Afghanistan and on and on, surviving only on her zeal to capture the fugitive. We're never really told why this all means so much to her, after a decade of work. Is it personal, or is just for the sake of country? Somehow, if it is the latter, one gets the feeling that move has been played out in so many other movies - we must get our man. But perhaps her motivation is immaterial. Since we know so little about our main character - just that she is a loner with apparently no friends or family - the main thread is simply Finding bin Laden. Simple and to the point.
So. If we remove the relative recency of 9/11/2001 from the equation, this is simply another action movie. Lots of explosions, Navy SEALS, blood and guts, political intrigue, and so on. But we can't remove that from the equation, can we? Many of us were alive and kicking in 2001 and remember this all too well, so it's a little different from watching an old Hollywood movie about the Second World War.
It is implied, very subtly, that information gleaned from detainees leads, obliquely, to the capture of bin Laden, but this was never the case. People say all kinds of crazy things under extreme duress. Again, I stress that this is fictitious based on true events; liberties have understandably been taken with plot elements.
As I was leaving the theater, I had some questions to face: Did I see what I expected? Well, I knew the ending, so yes, I suppose I did. But was it truly a great movie? I don't think so, no. I think it glorified - to the consternation of the US government itself - many aspects of our operations overseas that we'd rather not have glorified. The movie made us look great to the win-at-all-costs populace and look worse in the eyes of the international community. And, to be clear, this isn't a political statement, this review: President Bush is hardly mentioned, and when President Obama is shown on screen, he's declaring that America does not torture - while a room of CIA operatives who do just that watch, idly.
Zero Dark Thirty is a good film. Kathryn Bigelow's earlier The Hurt Locker was much more entertaining and better crafted; this one is not as well directed, as it feels like a cookie-cutter action/political thriller with a dash of topicality thrown in for spice.