Heavily Technically Flawed! Again!

Rating: 5/10 (6 April 2013)

I had reservations when I saw the name of the director who was responsible for the disastrous Hurt Locker (which I can only rate 4/10 stars, titled Heavily Technically Flawed! Well, looks like I am tempted to recycle this title again. Although the delivery looks better than Hurt Locker, the problem with this film came haunting back as technical flaws and wrong cultural perceptions again. Recreating real life stories (even if you have to adjust for some scenes for the sake of commercial appeal) is not that hard to do given the competitive movie-making talent nowadays - the real challenge to me is making sure the key details (even if they do not contribute to the plot) stays intact.
There were enough critic articles out there that were disappointed in how inaccurate the film is depicting the situation and the lifestyle in Pakistan, such prejudice that are available in so many sources that I wont comment here. Argo was also victim of this flaw, by the way.
For this movie, I would like to borrow from Esquire's interview of the shooter of bin Laden himself, his thoughts on the film seemed to show that he was turned off by the technical flaws as well, but commended on the film's portrayal of the CIA female analyst Maya:-
"They torture people in this movie, don't they? Everyone is chained to something."
The Shooter is sitting next to me (the interviewer) at a local movie theater in January, watching Zero Dark Thirty for the first time. He laughs at the beginning of the film about the bin Laden hunt when the screen reads, "Based on firsthand accounts of actual events." His uncle, who is also with us, along with the mentor and the Shooter's wife, had asked him earlier whether he'd seen the film already.
"I saw the original," the Shooter said. As the action moves toward the mission itself, I ask the Shooter whether his heart is beating faster. "No,". But when a SEAL Team 6 movie character yells, "Breacher!" for someone to blow one of the doors of the Abbottabad compound, the Shooter says loudly, "Are you kidding me? Shut up!" He explains afterward that no one would ever yell, "Breacher!" during an assault. Deadly silence is standard practice, a fist to the helmet sufficient signal for a SEAL with explosive packets to go to work.
During the shooting sequence, which passes, like the real one, in a flash, his fingers form a steeple under his chin and his focus is intense.
But his criticisms at dinner afterward are minor.
"The tattoo scene was horrible," he says about a moment in the film when the ST6 assault group is lounging in Afghanistan waiting to go. "Those guys had little skulls or something instead of having some real ink that goes up to here." He points to his shoulder blade.
"It was fun to watch. There was just little stuff. The helos turned the wrong way toward the target, and they talked way, way too much during the assault itself. If someone was waiting for you, they could track your movements that way." The tactics on the screen "were bad," he says, and "the mission in the movie took way too long" compared with the actual event. The stairs inside bin Laden's building were configured inaccurately. A dog in the film was a German shepherd; the real one was a Belgian Malinois who'd previously been shot in the chest and survived. And there's no talking on the choppers in real life.
There was also no whispered calling out of bin Laden as the SEALs stared up the third-floor stairwell toward his bedroom. "When Osama went down, it was chaos, people screaming. No one called his name." "They Hollywooded it up some." The portrayal of the chief CIA human bloodhound, "Maya," based on a real woman whose iron-willed assurance about the compound and its residents moved a government to action, was "awesome" says the Shooter. "They made her a tough woman, which she is." The Shooter and the mentor joke with each other about the latest thermal/night-vision eyewear used in the movie, which didn't exist when the older man was a SEAL.
"Dude, How come I never got my four-eye goggles?" "We have those." "Are you kidding me?" "SEAL Team 6, baby." They laugh, at themselves as much as at each other.
The Shooter seems smoothed out, untroubled, as relaxed as I've seen him.
But the conversation turns dark when they discuss the portrayal of the other CIA operative, Jennifer Matthews, who was among seven people killed in 2009 when a suicide bomber was allowed into one of their black-ops stations in Afghanistan.
They both knew at least one of the paramilitary contractors who perished with her.
The supper table is suddenly flooded with the surge of strong emotions. Anguish, really, though they both hide it well. This is not a movie. It's real life, where death is final and threats last forever.