Gripping

Rating: 8/10 (31 January 2013)

'Zero Dark Thirty' is director Kathryn Bigelow's follow-up to the brilliant 'The Hurt Locker.' It's based on the events which led up to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
The film can be looked at from two angles; one is that the film is nearly three hours long and sections can go on for quite a bit. The second angle is that it's trying to tell a story which spanned over ten years and there's an awful lot of source material to try and squeeze into a film. Personally, I didn't mind the film's length; it was gripping, interesting, the acting was very good and the information revealed was useful and showed how painstaking the process was. However, three hours can be a long time for some people, regardless of the film's content. The script was very well written; the dialogue seemed realistic enough. It is split into chapters which works very well and means it's easier to keep up with the time line.
The acting is a lot better than I had expected; Jessica Chastain was truly fantastic and I'm now rooting for her to win big at next month's awards. Even the smaller roles played by Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Mark Strong, James Gandolfini and Joel Edgerton were very well done. One thing I will not however is the really weird cameo from John Barrowman in one scene. For British people and maybe some Americans this will seem really random and I honestly don't even remember what was discussed in the scene he was in. All I remember is saying "Wait, is that John Barrowman? Why the hell is he there?" For what it's worth though, he does deliver his two lines very well.
When it comes to controversy and this film I really don't get it. Yes, there are scenes of torture but they don't glamorise it or try and make it seem like it was crucial to finding Bin Laden. They show scenes of torture because, in the early 2000s, it was seen as acceptable in terms of terrorist treatment. It would have been wrong for Kathryn Bigelow to gouge it out of her script. Bare in mind, these scenes were set in a time where the then President Bush jr. did not see water boarding as a form of torturebut then, George Bush says a lot of ridiculous things. Anyway, torture is shown and it can be quite uncomfortable to watch but it needed to be in the film.
Overall, the film is very good. If you like films like 'The Hurt Locker' or even 'Argo' then you will probably enjoy this. It's an interesting film with great performances and, given that the wounds Osama Bin Laden inflicted on the USA are still very raw, it is an issue that remains a huge talking point for people.