Ambiguous and somewhat numbing - like the assassination.

Rating: 6/10 (13 February 2013)

I'm a fan of Strange Days and Near Dark. With The Hurt Locker, Bigelow seemed to take a fairly major change of direction, attempting a more journalistic approach to film, identifying with people that do controversial difficult jobs. Whether we have journalism in ZD30 is highly questionable.
While I have concerns over the CIA's input into this script, Bigelow has focused on a very small part of the story in order to avoid being drawn into making overt propaganda, as Naomi Wolf has claimed. The downside of this is that we get very little context for the story - I wanted to hear more about the tensions within the back-offices of Langley and Islamabad that lead to UBL slipping down the list of priorities.
I would also say that the portrayal of torture is fairly accurate and appropriately disgusting without being gratuitous. Interrogators are occasionally disturbed by their task but increasingly become cold. The scene at the breakfast table interview with Ammar is the scene which critics focus on: I believe it shows that after torture has failed, it is Maya's intelligent observation that leads them to play an entirely psychological trick on Ammar (it could have been achieved by using sedative drugs). The torture almost loses them the information due to the time wasted and accumulative effects on the prisoner.
Guantanamo Bay is portrayed as a largely unproductive center full of resolute and untrustworthy sources along with some innocent men. The keeping of monkeys also makes it seem like a farcical and pointless hell-hole. To call this an argument FOR torture is inaccurate.
The two best sequences (the attack on Camp Chapman, which rewrites history slightly and the raid on UBL's compound) stand out head and shoulders above the rest of the film both in terms of tension and cinematography. Towards the end, it becomes clear that Bigelow is certainly not trying to glorify war - it may even suggest that one child was shot dead. The soldiers seem to go into a death trance, as if they are hunting an animal. There is no ridiculous dialogue or drawn out violence. Even though most audience members have little sympathy with the primary target, there is still something sickening about the way that lives are snuffed out as if they are taking care of some rodent pests. The bond between the soldiers seems very well researched and their complete lack of compassion for the male householders is convincing (the lack of hesitation). This is an unstoppable assassination and you can believe they would have killed everyone in the house if they deemed it necessary. The CIA's statements against the film may suggest it is uncomfortably close to the truth.
What is far less convincing is the way that CIA detectives speak with one another about the case - the dialogue in some office scenes can seem clunky and superficial, namedropping rather than accurately reflecting the procedures and chains of command. Towards the end of the investigation the team grows considerably, yet there is no sense of how this new department functions e.g. searching through old files passed from the Moroccan government.
I would say that the film is not racist but certainly would make you afraid to visit rural Pakistan as a civilian due to the gangs that are shown patrolling the streets. Bigelow's portrayal of Islamabad and Lahore looks more like Yemen and fails to show the colour, lifestyle and architecture. The portrayal of Islam seems fairly neutral if slightly shallow - one of the caucasian CIA managers is a convert to the religion and Maya's colleague Karim (played by the brilliant Fares Fares) is a Muslim Pakistani man - initially a translator who's role grows after he helps uncover a key piece of information. It is inaccurate to say that there are no Muslim voices present in the script, rather there are no Urdu voices and no subtitles. Apparently colloquial Arabic can occasionally be heard in the background which is inaccurate for the location.
The film is one-sided because it tells the story from the point of view of an understandably paranoid head-hunter living in a hostile situation. Maya is no hero: her boss clearly points out to her that she has lost any focus helping with new, separate terrorist cells due to her obsession. So the story seems to play out as a leap of faith : the belief that UBL's death will some how bring 'closure' to 9/11 and some sort of redemption. The ending suggests that it does not do this but rather just releases a flood of tears (as if mourning for lost years). Maya is shown as highly intellectually developed but emotionally naive.
Bigelow places a glamorous young actress centre stage, a somewhat unconvincing version of an agent. A more gritty actress like Tilda Swinton might have fitted the script better. The partly redeeming quality of the film is that it portrays all of the main characters as pragmatic, scarred, bitter, unhappy people. If this is a recruitment video for the CIA it's a poor one.
Unfortunately, Karim was maybe the only character I really felt anything for. I found the scene where he is warning civilians to, "Keep back or they will kill you!" very moving - he refers to his colleagues as 'they' and seems genuinely concerned that the operation may end in carnage.
Finally, the music towards the end sequence threatens to kill the ambiguity of the final shot. It's an extremely thorny set of issues to portray in film and Bigelow will inevitably disappoint many with this patchy effort.