maybe a TV mini series?

Rating: 3/10 (7 July 2013)

Oh, no....there is so much at fault with this movie, I don't know where to begin! Let's start with the lead character, Maya. In the beginning of the film she can barely watch a violent interrogation. As the film progresses the attempt that is made to show her character has evolved is done with her swearing at her bosses and basically acting hysterical towards them, which is obviously how CIA agents keep their jobs, right? I mean it works in Homeland, so why not here? But Maya is not always like that. No. When Maya is not belittling her superiors, she is blank, completely void of emotion. References to how "exhausted" and "worn-down" she was could not make me care about this empty character, and believe me, the references were constant and plentiful. In fact, the only character that I found mildly interesting was that of Dan, the CIA interrogator. When he didn't get his way he would be brutal making you feel kinda feel sorry for anyone he was interrogating (even though you knew they were a terrorist). This was an everyday guy doing his job, as if it was nothing. At some point he states he is going back home to get some normalcy and balance back, almost as if he were talking about going on a vacation to recharge before going back to work. The film decides to open with Dan at work, an ingenious move seeing as these scenes are probably the most powerful and disturbing of the whole film. It's all downhill afterwards....
As for the other characters, why oh why are there so many? I get it, this was a big operation, it involved many people and organisations operating together - that doesn't mean we have to be introduced to each and everyone of them in one film! But it doesn't stop there, oh no. There is no time to develop these characters not only because there are too many of them, but because the film is filled with long, boring dialogue of no consequence with mainly secondary characters. I found myself nodding off more than once...
The plot! Oh wow! I read the other reviews and couldn't stop laughing with how many plot holes people found! Things like: *spoilers ahead* Pakistanis don't speak Arabic, but Urdu, or Maya in a restaurant talking to a colleague, mentioning - in public! - the name of a suspect. In fact, from what I gathered, a lot of what goes on in this film is fiction. Bending of the truth, bad acting, poor writing, choppy and amateur camera-work, are not the only things that bothered me about this film. The fact that the film implies that UBL is caught and killed mostly due to Maya's 12-year sole dedication to get him, well, no.
This felt more like it should of been a 3-part fictional TV series, a Homeland rip-off. Don't waste your time on this....