Superlative political thriller

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2020)

Maya, a tenacious CIA agent (Jessica Chastain) searches for world's most wanted man: Osama Bin Laden, against the background of terrorist attacks against Western targets. Director Kathryn Bigelow does a masterful job of blending tension and action with the sometimes tedious processes of data analysis and surveillance (the film compresses eight years of searching for the 9-11 mastermind into 160 minutes). Chastain is excellent as the driven analyst and the film wisely wastes no time on her life outside the search (i.e. no gratuitous romance, personal affairs, etc). The rest of the cast is also quite good, especially Jennifer Ehle as Maya's colleague Jessica. The lengthy climatic set-piece, as the special-ops team move in on bin Laden's compound near Abbottabad, Pakistan is outstanding. The film was controversial for its depiction of torture (aka 'enhanced interrogation techniques') as an effective 'necessary evil' in the 'war on terrorism'. 'Ends vs. means' arguments aside, 'Zero Dark Thirty' is a riveting adventure with some great action sequences, but I admit that I have a very non-PC love for films like this and that some people might find the film repugnant (especially the first half-hour).