Challenging and Gripping Depiction

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2013)

Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's Zero Dark Thirty is a journalistic account (disclaimer: "journalistic" does not equal factually accurate) of the ten year search for Bin Laden and one woman's unparalleled determination to see him dead. The film is an absorbing look into the world of the CIA, a gripping action film, and a reflection of the United States's internal conflict over the methods employed by our intelligence agencies in the War on Terror.
The film opens with a black screen and confusing audio from September 11, 2001, but one conversation clearly emerges- a 911 call from the burning World Trade Center. The woman on the phone screams about the intense heat of the fire, but the most harrowing part of this segment was not the audio itself, but the silence that followed after it.
The movie continues with a CIA agent named Dan (Jason Clarke) torturing the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the planner of 9/11. He is beaten, water boarded, and stuffed in a small wooden box. The film's main character Maya (Jessica Chastain) observes in horror, but eventually she seems to accept these methods as just another part of their information gathering process. At one point she tells the prisoner that he can help himself if he starts telling the truth. The CIA agents only begin to make progress when they treat the prisoner nicely, however, by offering him a meal. He then gives them the name of Bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed.
These scenes have earned the movie the title of the most controversial movie of the year. Opinions on this movie vary just as wildly as the national conversation on the issue of torture today. The controversy of these scenes comes from the movie's refusal to take an outright stance on torture. I don't want to get into this too deeply since many critics have already written excellent pieces on the subject. But this leads me to a question: Is it the director's responsibility to take a stand on issues like this, or is it better to let the audience decide? I can really understand both of these positions, but as someone who likes movies that force the audience to think about these controversial issues rather than spoon feeding them a message, I like Bigelow's approach.
From here, the film begins its second and longest act, a procedural drama about the painstaking search for Abu Ahmed and Maya's struggle for support in the CIA. Her executives and co-workers doubt her lead, but her persistence borders on obsession. Maya seemingly has no personal life or any other commitments- Bin Laden is on her mind 24/7. Chastain is tough as nails as a woman in a man's world. Her performance has been universally lauded, but the character herself has been a source of criticism as the film does not give us any insight into where her obsession with finding Bin Laden came from. However, I don't think the film needs to give her a motive. Maya feels the shame that America felt when Bin Laden practically disappeared from the national conversation only two years after 9/11- isn't that enough of a motive?
Finally, Maya tracks the courier down to a compound in Abottabad Pakistan, and the final act focuses on the Navy Seal mission that ended in the assassination of Bin Laden. We all know how Bin Laden was killed, but the third act of the film is riveting nonetheless. This is the most authentic (feeling) military mission I've seen in a movie since, well, The Hurt Locker, proving that Bigelow is still the master of military movies. Seal Team Six's raid on Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan is executed with remarkable efficiency despite a few setbacks (I don't want to spoil them for you). They kill Bin Laden and the people he was living with (including women) in a systematic fashion, almost like a doctor performing surgery, as we view the mission through the Seal's night vision goggles.
The movie does not question the ethics of invading a foreign country without authorization, but two scenes involving Pakistani witnesses to the mission demonstrated the downside of such decisions. I am not questioning the justification of the mission, but I wonder if Pakistanis will ever trust America. One scene involved crying children in the compound who just witnessed the deaths of their parents. The other scene involved the people from the surrounding homes approaching the compound to investigate. One of the soldiers speaks into a megaphone in Arabic and tells them to turn around, but they don't listen. The soldier tells his companion, Hakim, that if the Pakistanis don't turn around soon he will open fire, which motivates Hakim to yell in English that if they don't turn around they will be killed. You can bet they listened to that. Scenes like these will provoke discussion about the complexities of modern warfare.
With that, Zero Dark Thirty is a challenging, gripping film that does not give us easy answers. Perhaps it's because the United States hasn't come to any answers as a nation. I'm not sure where it would rank on my list of 2012 movies but it's definitely in the top ten.