Great for Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, Horrid Chastain Brings it Down

Rating: 7/10 (21 January 2013)

**This Review Contains Some Spoilers**
The sounds of the 9/11 calls from the planes and the towers drew me in, as i believed this would be really epic and an awesome portrayal of how everyone felt and how everything went down. And the cut after deflated the film and set the tone for what would happen.
Is there torture? Yes, but it doesn't glorify it like the politicians have been saying. However, it doesn't demonize it, showing it did get us very vital intelligence that we desperately needed. Then the movie drags for about an hour and a half. The last half hour is one of the best sequences I have seen in a long time, but the key moment is a let down. Unlike Titanic, where you knew the ending but it was awesome to see and experience how it happened, in this film the moment happens, and it's just like, "Oh yeah that happened, nothing important."
Now we get to what should be the strongest bones of the movie, Jessica Chastain's performance. WHERE DO I BEGIN? She comes in unannounced, reacts to something, and yells at her bosses. I give her credit s after a colleague dies (which the colleague is made out to be a complete moron when it comes to protocol) she does show some genuine emotion. But that is brief.
I felt that Bigelow and Boal made their biggest mistake with this character. I wanted to punch in one scene where she badgers her boss about the compound. I wanted to scream at her, but being in a theater that would have been rude. I can sum up here character like this. She found Osama, she actually does work, she is the first American to see him after the mission, It's all because of her. Here's the biggest insult to the audience, she makes everyone else, who spent years and countless hours trying to hunt this guy down, look like complete IDIOTS. (One man: 75% he's there; Another man; 40%, we have no strong evidence; Chastain: 100% he's there "I am the one who found that man") I can't care for her, which storytelling really counts on for a film like this. If she wins an Oscar, it is not well deserved at all.
Boal's screenplay can get murky sometimes, but it's still a solid script, even with Chastain's character in it. If he wins, good for him. I do think Bigelow was unfairly snubbed, but I think it was because how she handled Chastain.
So, like I said before, it is entertaining. It will never, ever match The Hurt Locker, which is the better film from the Bigelow-Boal team.
"For God and Country, Geronimo!"
P.S. How dare they make Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights an idiot! How dare they!