The Best Movie of the Year...Bigelow kills it.

Rating: 9/10 (26 January 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty isn't just a movie...it's an experience. It's built around one character Maya (Jessica Chastain) who is working for the CIA on the man hunt for Osama Bin Laden the man who caused 9/11. The movie it's self opens with a blank screen and only the noise of the disaster and phone calls from the hijacked planes on the day of 9/11. We then are brought to torture. Things like water-boarding are used to get evidence of the whereabouts of Al-Queda members. Dan (Jason Clarke) the leader of the interrogation tortures a poor Ammar (Reda Kateb) until he can't take anymore. Watching all of this is Maya (Chastain). You see, the problem about these torture "interrogation" scenes are the public or critics will say that "maybe that's not how it happened and they didn't use water-boarding" and so forth. But, if they didn't put these scenes in Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow the writers would have been criticized for not putting it. So either way it would have been viewed on. The opening couple of scenes aren't great film making. Your not sure what is going on and the plot and your interest is hanging by a thread. But after these couple of scenes the movie gets going and basically turns in to the Jessica Chastain show. Her performance In this movie is just so raw and simple she steals it. Her character Maya has no back story of any sort...the key of this movie is the story. It's all historical events every last shot and we follow the character of Maya. There are a lot of characters that come in and out of the story but there aren't really any character development. Which is a bummer because Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker revolved around character development so much. The events in the movie such as **spoilers** The Marriott Hotel bombing, the bombing of the bus in London, The attempted bombing of Times Square and the bombing in CIA base. The movie is 157 minutes long and takes a lot of time to come to our finale of the raid on Osama Bin Laden but, the movie does have it's long parts and is a slow moving film but it's just interesting and cynical film on the greatest man hunt of all time. It's 2 hours of built up to our raid the moment we have all (let's be honest) waiting for. The raid it's self is very intense and I love that but, not being able to see what's going on...just camera shaking and snipers and cool stuff. It'll do but it's not entertainment. But they do do the scene expertly. It's intense and nerve wrecking. Even if you yourself know how the raid went down you'd still find yourself being all "DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!"..it's just expert film making. Kathryn Bigelow deserves credit for her amazing work and eye for detail in this movie. While watching you can really tell a lot of work went into it. It's solidly acted also. There's cameos from all sorts from Kyle Chandler to Mark Strong. It's just a great time at the cinemas. The whole movie is a great time...it may not be pretty but you did enjoy it! It's just the best time you'll have at the cinema. And as the final scenes close you can't help but bite your finger nails. When the credits then showed I sat there shocked by what I'd scene. I got up out of my seat and from there as my dad said "it was alright wasn't it" I knew it was a masterpiece!