A strong fact-based thriller

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2013)

With the success of 2008's Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker under their belts, it shouldn't have been tremendously surprising that director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal would chose to make a film chronicling the decade long search for Osama Bin Laden that culminated in his death at the hands of Navy Seals in May of 2011. The resulting production, Zero Dark Thirty, is a strong, at times involving, story of obsession and the, at times, monotonous and detail oriented search for Bin Laden that largely revolves around a single, dedicated individual.
Zero Dark Thirty begins with audio clips of the assault on the Twin Towers of September 11, 2001 and then jumps forward a few years later, where we see the rough interrogation techniques being applied by the CIA to Al Qaeda members to attempt to glean the location of Bin Laden. The early scenes largely focus on fresh CIA analyst Maya (Jessica Chastain) and Dan (Jason Clarke) a more grizzled veteran of relentless torture of the various detainees. The two of them, overseen by the Pakistan chief Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler), utilize a wide variety of approaches to break the men down, getting various references to a shadowy courier of information for Bin Laden, Abu Ahmed. As the years stretch on, various incidents of bombings, including one in London, another in Pakistan, and a devastating attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan, lead the various CIA superiors to begin questioning the search for Bin Laden, but Maya, who has devoted her every waking moment to the hunt, refuses to give in. When a happenstance of information crosses her attention, she is able to eventually determine, with the help of a military operative, Larry (Edgar Ramirez), what she believes is the location of Bin Laden at a heavily fortified compound in Pakistan. She must then convince the CIA that Bin Laden is there so they can move forward with a plan to take him out.
Zero Dark Thirty is a film that is driven almost exclusively by plot, recounting the various major events of the years since 2001 to the eventual raid on Bin Laden's compound in 2011. Various characters come and go in the course of the story, but few are given much of an opportunity to grow beyond the technical dialogue they are given to recite. The exception, for the most part, is Jessica Chastain's Maya. We still learn very little about her beyond a few details here and there, but some of that is one of the film's central points: Maya has allowed herself to be all consumed by the search for Bin Laden that she has let it subsume the rest of her life. In one scene, a co-worker of Maya asks her about her friends and a boyfriend, and she cannot respond in the positive to either question. What character driven aspects there are to Zero Dark Thirty are almost exclusively derived from Maya's story.
The early scenes of Zero Dark Thirty can prove a bit disorienting to watch at times. The filmmakers throw a lot of acronyms, technical jargon and half explained dialogue at the audience, and it is up to us to try and see if we can keep up. On the one hand, I appreciate the filmmaker's willingness to not dumb down the material to keep it extra accessible for the general movie-going public, but on the other hand, by constantly trying to scratch out some semblance of what is going on, the film does lose of some of it's draw. Eventually, the details begin to coalesce into a story you can generally follow, but at times it feels like we are one step behind the details being unspooled on the screen.
Some have criticized Zero Dark Thirty's depiction of torture by the CIA operatives on the various Al Qaeda members, and it even seems to take a neutral stance on the use of those techniques. Many of the torture scenes are harrowing to watch, as human beings are treated as animals by the agents trying to glean information from their prisoners. Zero Dark Thirty isn't a meditation on the ethics and morality of the use of torture, however, it is simply telling a story of what happened, and the filmmakers choose not to shy away from the darker aspects of that hunt.
Bigelow and Boal do an exceptional job of building suspense at key moments in the film. More than once, the film will jump to a specific moment in time to correspond to a particular event that occurred over the course of the last 10 years, and the build of tension until a seemingly unavoidable moment of violence unfolds is effective and palpable. Other moments are without warning, as the films forward momentum is suddenly punctuated by an unexpected jolt. Both techniques work well and keep you riveted and involved in the film. The only time this fails to deliver is a late action scene involving Maya outside her home in Pakistan as the film careens towards a rather expected development. It doesn't rob it of power, but it still seems more and more certain before it arrives.
Zero Dark Thirty's cornerstone is the final raid on the Bin Laden compound. It unfolds without music, in a very matter of fact fashion, lacking the sensationalism of most thrillers or action films. Zero Dark Thirty lives up to its perception of being true to events as they happened. Nevertheless, this sequence provides an at times moving climax as the events of the previous two hours finally lead to a resolution.
Zero Dark Thirty isn't perfect, its early scenes can prove disorienting, and the film's lack of emotional depth can keep us at arm's lengths to the proceedings on the screen at times, but nonetheless, it is an effective thriller that delivers an at times powerful tale of one woman's unwavering dedication to complete her mission, moving all obstacles in her path.