Closer than we're ever gonna get

Rating: 10/10 (13 January 2013)

Sometimes the truth is ugly. Depending how you look at it: this is the story of how Americans tortured, spied, spent millions of taxpayer's dollars in the hunt of a very elusive Osama bin Laden. It's also about attaining closure, the tenacity and the courage that it took for a Navy Seal team to go on a hunch and risk their lives to capture the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks that affected every American since and the way we live today. The truth is never one sided and that's why Zero Dark Thirty is a great film. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty was originally about the failed attempt to find bin Laden until the news about his death broke out in May 2011. What she did in such little time is short of incredible. Along with screenwriter Mark Boal, with whom she also co-wrote The Hurt Locker, had to go back to their drawing board and finish writing the eclectic finale. She managed to get us inside the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden hid for a very long time and gave us a glimpse of the operative that almost never happened had it not been for Jessica Chastain's character Maya. Maya is based on a real CIA officer and her investigation leading up to bin Laden's location which took a decade to find. Fresh out of high school, Maya is sent to Pakistan to gather information from several prisoners that are being tortured to get leads to find bin Laden's location. The job is not easy. She is witness to how brutal are the means to get any information from these prisoners, borderline inhumane. Maya cringes at the sight of an informant drowning under a wet towel as gallons of water are poured over his mouth. Maya is clearly not comfortable with the methods, a look at her frightened expression is enough to place ourselves in her shoes. Still, she knows that this is the only way to get any information that will lead to capturing a murderer blamed for killing more than 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks to the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The lead takes her team nowhere. Meanwhile we see attacks at the Marriot Hotel in Pakistan that kills 54 people while Maya and Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) are having a casual dinner. Maya barely survives another attack when she dodges bullets aimed at her car. Ultimately, her friend and fellow officer Jessica gets killed in a terrorist attack at Camp Chapman when a suicide bomber, claiming to be an informant, gets close enough and detonates, killing seven officers and injuring others.
Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty Maya is sent back to the States for her own safety. However, she is determined that she's found the location to bin Laden's compound in Pakistan although there's no visual proof. Now it becomes her sole purpose to tantalize everybody and urge to send a team to hunt bin Laden down against political opposition. A very risky mission that pays off at the end. Zero Dark Thirty chronicles the operative of the Navy Seal team with such military precision that we feel as if we were wearing those night vision goggles. We become part of the operation and we get a clear idea of what it was like to get into bin Laden's compound. The following scenes are so nerve wrecking that you could almost hear a pin drop inside the movie theater. No history book or documentary is as detailed and truthful as Kathryn's account. She may get criticism for what she's accomplished with Zero Dark Thirty. The probably claim that she divulges too much information in such a secretive operation. I believe that we deserve the truth, as much as it may hurt. We deserve to know what happen to bin Laden. We needed closure and that's what we get with this film. On my part, Kathryn has gone where no other director, let alone a female director, has gone before.