Patience pays off at the end !

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2013)

Curiosity is at the center of our taste for cinema. A new premise always makes for exciting movie watching with most of the thrill preserved for how the climax culminates. Now even before you have bought your popcorn and settled into your seats, you're already aware of the Zero Dark Thirty's premise (the hunt for OBL) and the climax (the infamous capture at Abbottabad, Pakistan). Then why watch it ? The devil, and all the chilling thrill in this case, is in the detail.
Director Katherine Biglow's progression as a story teller from her previous work Hurt Locker to Zero Dark Thirty is highly laudable. While Hurt Locker did win the Oscar for Best movie for 2009 and Zero Dark Thirty may not in spite that it is nominated, there is no doubt that the latter scores remarkably higher in drama quotient and entertainment value compared to the former. And although Biglow is divorced from her ex-husband and one of the most famous directors of our times James Cameron, she is truly wedded to this genre of cinema and settled very well in this marriage indeed.
Biglow unveils the intense and passionate search by a CIA agent named Maya in the movie (real name is CIA confidential info for obvious reasons) who will move heaven and hearth to find Osama Bin Laden. Her struggle to find OBL is compounded by the natural ethos of her organization, the CIA, as she battles the intensely bureaucratic system and it's surprisingly high aversion to risk. Jessica Chastain as Maya excels in this role, and already stands vindicated by the Golden Globe award for Best Actress awarded to her for ZDT. The movie depicts her meteoric rise from a shy newly hired CIA agent to someone who rattles the top brass of CIA in order to nab OBL. Several times during the movie Chastain reminded me of Julia Roberts in Erin Brockvich due to her feisty no-nonsense character and performance that showcases the steely spine of a go getter. The meat in her role is enough for the scholars at the Academy to chew on and have no room left to ask for more before they get compelled to declare her as the best female performer of the year.
Zero Dark Thirty does try your patience at first due to slow pace at the start of the movie, but it gradually builds and then compensates to a large extent in the second half when the pace almost inverts and the movie just can't run any faster. The detail which emerges behind the hunt of America' most wanted man is purely captivating, and leaves even the highest detractors of our government with some respect for what the men working in it's agencies do to keep us safe. The sets built for OBL's Abbottabad mansion with its compound look fascinatingly real and support a perfect climax to the tale. And although everything about the climax is known in advance, one of the most memorable scene is about the 2 Blackhawk helicopters that begin the daring raid at 12:30am on the fated day to travel from Afghanistan border deep into Pakistan territory and land into OBL's compound that is just a mile away from a Pakistani military establishment. The scene is so hair razing that I felt compelled to keep my fingers crossed in spite of everything we know about the terrific success of that mission without loss of a single American life.
Mark Boal's writing and his research that has gone into writing the screenplay is exemplary, in spite that it has attracted Republican accusations that the Obama administration inappropriately provided material to make this movie. The dividing line between a fine screenplay and fine directing is sometimes blurry, as one could be easily mistaken for the other. In the case of Zero Dark Thirty, the balance appears to have moved in favor of Boal who is nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay, but not Biglow for direction of the same movie.
Subjects like this generally make powerful documentaries but not necessarily entertaining movies. Creating a power packed dramatization without deviating from facts is a huge challenge but one that the team of ZDT has successfully overcome. This movie is a must watch for every American to learn what went into the capture of the nation's most wanted outlaw. And finally, this movie rekindles the spirit in you.. that if one puts his mind and heart into a task then nothing is mission impossible.
Love USA.