Zero suspense, emotion, interest. Dark, nasty, unpleasant, boring. Thirty minutes too long.

Rating: 2/10 (4 May 2014)

I want to start by listing 2013 movies that are better than this film: White House Down. The Lone Ranger. Olympus Has Fallen. Cloud Atlas. Gravity. Frozen. Philomena. Saving Mr Banks. The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. Prisoners. The Great Beauty. Thor The Dark World. Pacific Rim. Star Trek Into Darkness. Rush. Her. Captain Phillips. The World's End. Elysium. The Hunger Games Catching Fire. Man Of Steel. The Great Gatsby. Iron Man 3. World War Z. Jack The Giant Slayer. American Hustle. The Purge. Fast And Furious 6. Insidious Chapter 2. RED 2. Now You See Me. Dallas Buyers Club. Monsters University. The Hobbit The Desolation Of Smaug. 12 Years A Slave. Carrie. The Conjuring. Kick-Ass 2. Is that everything? Are you sure? Zero Dark Thirty is an account of the 10 year manhunt for Osama Bin Laden so it covers a major topic, but sadly fails to do it any justice. Critics may have been raving about it, but some things can't be explained. This is a terrible movie which aside from some good performances bringing the characters (sorry, robots) to life, this has little to recommend it.
This movie is very badly edited, and is literally just a collection of clips and events pasted together with the skill and art of a 3 year olds paper collage. There's no backstory or emotional depth whatsoever, it is simply a re-enactment. I could excuse that if it was well directed but it really isn't. None of the shots contain any meaning or emotional power, and the script is one of the worst I listened to in all of 2013. ZDT is more robotic than a Terminator, and it's far too long. It's hollow and totally un-enjoyable and something no-one should ever watch more than once. Kathryn Bigelow clearly can direct, but here she doesn't even really direct the film. The first 2 hours are repetitive, boring and unpleasant, with the first 40 minutes being a man getting tortured. The attack on the compound is not tense and is nothing more than cross cutting between night vision shots of other dark shots. I wasted an entire afternoon on this, and this really is an awful film which didn't deserve the critical acclaim it got. If you thought Avatar was overrated, wait until you see this.
2/10