The Hunt for Bin Laden

Rating: 9/10 (25 January 2013)

Another tense nail-biter from Kathryn Bigelow, who is easily one of the top, say, three directors working when it comes to filming combat action sequences.
"Zero Dark Thirty" isn't quite as visceral as "The Hurt Locker," Bigelow's break-out film from a few years ago, but it's not meant to be. This story about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden takes primarily in makeshift offices, where various people comb over CIA intelligence in an attempt to track down clues as to Bin Laden's whereabouts. The film is anchored by a no-frills performance by Jessica Chastain, playing a somewhat odd and unsympathetic character, a young woman who's so obsessed with finding Bin Laden that she comes a bit unhinged when he's found and she realizes she had nothing else in her life but the manhunt for him. Bigelow makes some of the smartest action movies ever put to screen, completely lacking in bombast or audience manipulation. She directs with an objective, journalistic approach, and lets her audience do its own thinking, a rare treat in movies these days.
The last twenty minutes or so are given over to a breathless sequence detailing the raid on Bin Laden's compound and his death, and I was sweating bullets by the time the whole thing was over even though I already knew the outcome.
Grade: A