Maya gets her man.

Rating: 5/10 (21 January 2013)

The decade long hunt for Osama Bin Laden takes nearly as long to tell in this laboriously slow telling interspersed with explosions to keep the audience awake in Zero Dark Thirty. Director Ann Bigelow does an end run with the story as she tells it from the point of view of a high school recruited CIA agent who goes from innocent to intrepid man hunter over the period while the rest of a timid CIA runs in circles before she sets Director Leon Panetta straight and leads the team to his hideout. Given Maya's ubiquitous and sure handed presence throughout the film one is surprised at the films climax that she doesn't fly one of the copters and lead the commandos in the raid not to mention putting the bullets in UBL.
Bigelow does not shy away from the controversial use of torture in getting info as the film opens with Maya's baptism of fire. She is at first repulsed and nauseated but over time allows it in her. interrogations. Following a series of leads, many going nowhere they eventually get lucky with the possibility they have located him in a house in Pakistan. The decision to move on the info is met with skepticism and doubt by the suits but Maya pushed to the back steps up and gives the it's spine. Leon likes her ( she does have that stoic spunk )and it's go time on her call
As Maya aka Joan of Arc, Jessica Chastein performance is a series of reaction shots and outbursts as Bigelow frames her in taut close up and Gary Cooper High Noon long shots. The film is all business and personal lives factor little. Maya alienated from the bungling around her connects little with the rest of the agents save for a giddy exchange of texting between girls bringing an enemy in that ends disastrously. Other than a torturer CIA agents are doughy and sheepish, the commandos Tony Robbins fans and good horseshoe players.
With little or no depth of character to be found the film relies on it's suspenseful moments for it's voice but they are too far and few between to keep the film above the torpor it constantly lapses into and the result is a disappointing telling of the story of the century that more aptly might be titled Alice in Nightmare Land.