Genuinely not impressed

Rating: 1/10 (14 January 2013)

Here's what I expected going in to Zero Dark Thirty: a really fantastic piece of cinema that I would grudgingly be forced to appreciate even while disagreeing with its depiction and value judgement on torture (I was aware of the controversy prior to viewing).
What I got instead was a surprisingly boring movie, that had almost non- existent character development, very conventional (mundane) writing, and not much substance. I don't know why critics are in love with the movie; it's not a good documentary, and it isn't a very compelling piece of fiction either.
I would give ZDT an average rating overall (technically, it's by no means a TERRIBLE movie), but for the "small" fact that it ends up being unabashedly apologist for "enhanced interrogation" (torture). We're told time and time again throughout the movie how important the "detainee program" was to finding Bin Laden, we're shown how torture broke the captives, and then how prisoners eventually start spilling vital secrets because of "biology" (the inevitable conclusion to torture, the movie tells us, is the truth). This all is, by most clear thinking and civilized people, morally reprehensible and patently false. Just ask John McCain, himself a victim of torture.
Even a well crafted movie would get a low score from me if it presented torture as a necessary but evil truth serum, and Zero Dark Thirty is not that.