Waterboarding is more fun than this garbage

Rating: 1/10 (18 July 2013)

Isn't it time America got over 9/11 and stopped wasting millions on garbage like this. 9/11 has not only traumatized the national psyche, it has retarded the national IQ if awful movies this are nominated for best picture. This ham-fisted propaganda piece was so shallow and obviously manipulative it often had me laughing out loud. One comedic moment: head torturer feeds ice cream to caged monkeys, then later when he learns they are eliminated for no reason, we see his anguish. See, torturers do have feelings  for monkeys.
The torture scenes, taking up most of the first half of the movie, are not just propaganda, but slow the action down and provide little useful narrative. Most of these scenes could have and should have been cut, especially when the internee is led around naked on a dog collar. Really? Come off it, Bigelow. This dramatization of the Abu Ghraib photos that so appalled the world is an offensive insult to the audience's intelligence. The message is that, no, despite the obvious evidence, Abu Ghraib guards weren't half-wit rednecks denigrating human life for their own sick amusement and Facebook fun, but serious intelligence agents using scientific dog collar interrogation techniques to protect the free world. Pathetic.
By the time the story finally picks up the pace and becomes engaging, half the movie has gone. There is even enough tension to overlook the slightly ludicrous central characterization and storyline – one woman fights not only terrorists but her table-thumping, swearing, macho bosses to find bin Laden when everyone else has given up. Her mother f**ker outburst, mixing it with the boys, is another unintentionally hilarious scene.
But after Zero Dark Thirty finally promises to become a half-decent thriller, we have to sit through a tedious drawn-out finale shot in night vision inside the Bin Laden compound. It looks like the US military wrote this part of the script, and demanded nothing could be cut. It was visually difficult to follow, needlessly long and left questions unanswered, like how did they know with certainty it was Bin Laden.
And why didn't we see Bin Laden's body dumped in the sea? Could it be they're planning a sequel. Bin Laden lives and is being tortured in Gitmo! If so, let's hope Katherine Bigelow doesn't direct it, or any more movies. She is to the war on terror, what Leni Riefenstahl was to Hitler's Germany.