engrossing, entertaining propaganda

Rating: 7/10 (21 February 2015)

I saw this movie in a rather strange form. I watched the first hour, but by the end of that my girlfriend was so freaked out by all the very convincing torture scenes and general sense of gritty violence that she couldn't watch anymore. A year later, she decided it was time to watch the rest. Oddly enough, it turns out by the time she had stopped, the torture was over.
In fact, the movie has at least three distinct parts, an early section devoted to interrogation, then a section devoted to analysis and lobbying Washington, and then an infiltration section.
The first section is gritty and well done, but it's also where all the controversy lies. The movie takes the position that torture is how we got our actionable intelligence, something a later congressional report suggested was not true. The movie hues very closely to how the military wants this mission to be portrayed, from its effective interrogation to its brilliant analysis to its artful infiltration.
Of course, lots of movies portray torture as magically effective, even though historically, torture is anything but. The problem is, this movie claims historical accuracy.
Beyond that, it's an interesting movie, especially the final section, which goes against pretty much everything you'll see in a typical war movie. The soldiers are methodical, gunplay is over almost before it begins, and the body count is kept to a minimum. It feels very realistic and completely devoid of Hollywood flash.
While well made and engrossing, I never found this movie as thrilling as the critics did. It is a good movie, but I wouldn't call it a must-see movie, even if I didn't have issues with its politics.