Solid Effort

Rating: 8/10 (23 February 2013)

I have to commend the Bigelow/Boal team for making a movie about such a controversial topic when it's this fresh still. I've seen nut jobs coming out of the woodwork saying nonsense like:
1. This film is liberal propaganda meant to prop up the Obama Administration.
2. This film is conservative propaganda depicting how awesome torture, err, "enhanced interrogation techniques" are.
3. This film is just the cherry on top of a massive conspiracy wherein all of a sudden the govt. decided to announce the murder of Bin Laden, but he was either A) already dead or that B) it was not Bin Laden they murdered.
And so it goes with anything remotely political in this country--there are crazies on both sides, but there is little middle ground. Naturally people view this through their lens of choice, whether Fox or MSNBC, but I have to say I did not find this movie to be rife with political ambitions. In fact, I think Bigelow, despite any partisan view she may or may not have, went out of her way to distance this picture from anything partisan (other than maybe pro-American) for that very reason. Due to the meandering timeline of this film, we got to see small snippets of a GW Bush appearance as well as a 60 Minutes interview with Obama. And in both cases, they were depicted as merely presidential--not bumbling, not good, and not bad--just as Commander in Chief at certain periods in history. What's more, is none of the characters in the movie made reference to either, other than something to the effect of 'you have to get this together before I present it to the President.'
Having gotten past the politics, one can actually start to critique this movie. And, it's basically a character study of Jessica Chastain's Maya. As depicted early in the film, Maya was repulsed by the torture that was occurring and when left alone with a detainee, you could hear the trembling idealism in her voice. Juxtapose this against a frenetic Maya angrily scribbling the days elapsed while the CIA sat on its hands about intel, and you have quite the contrast. Her character grew, and as the final scene leaves open to us, was it good growth for her? Certainly it was satisfying professionally, but was it worth that much of her life? Tears of joy? Tears of release? In the meantime, she'd been nearly killed and had some of her few friends blown up in a suicide bombing. While not the most engrossing character study I've seen, it was quite believable how Maya basically sacrificed any kind of normal life to do CIA work in Pakistan, work needed to be the MF'ing heroine that found the compound in Abbottabad. When asked point blank if she had any friends, she had no answer. And, kudos as well for not sticking an obligatory, Chastain is kinda hot so let's toss in a gratuitous sex scene. That was the right choice for her "tortured" character.
As far as the filmmaking, it was a confluence of capable parts. Nothing extremely visionary here and no one is going to put Bigelow alongside Orson Welles, Kubrick, or Hitchcock for this picture. The score was good, the script was believable, the cinematography was good, and the acting was also solid. This was a story-driven movie for the most part, not a technical masterpiece. Nothing really stood out, although I see that some are saying Arabic was being spoken in Pakistan when it should have been Urdu. Not being an expert on those languages, I have nothing to add there, but that may be a wart in the production of ZD30.
There were two memorable parts to this movie for me, other than the obvious focus on the heroine Maya. First, there was the totally unexpected Mariott bombing in Pakistan. I usually see these coming (as with the utterly predictable CIA compound car bomb), and I'm not sure if I missed the fact they'd entered the Mariott, but the explosion came completely out of left field for me. The second thing was basically the commitment to show a reenactment of the actual Seal Team operation in what seemed close to real time. Even though I obviously knew how that played out, the suspense was actually gripping during that whole 30 minute period. And for the people I see asking, well what did the movie's title mean? Run that scene back where the choppers head in and the mission is a go, Maya looks at the ops clock, and it reads 00:30. That scene is worth another viewing anyway.
TL;DR: Despite what the crazies are saying about how this movie is just "propaganda" being fed to the "sheep" out there; I say this is actually a solid movie. It takes a recent historical happening that most people care about, threads the needle between a military drama and a documentary with a nice touch of suspense. Though this movie is not a masterwork, hopefully ZD30, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, or LIFE OF PI can stop Hollywood from making a bigger ass of itself by giving unworthy pictures like ARGO or LINCOLN Best Picture.