Thorough, absorbing but demanding (maybe over so) true life account

Rating: 7/10 (3 September 2013)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Even after the tenth anniversary of 9/11 hadn't quite approached, I can still remember the jubilation and news domination of Osama bin Laden's demise at the hand of the US army unit that took him out. To this day, in the mind's of many, it's still incomprehensible that the American military, with all it's might, couldn't find a guy living in a cave, and that it took so long, and so much man power. I suppose it is one of those things where you'd think to yourself what a great movie it would have made. After making an account of the first consequence of the 9/11 attacks, in the shape of war drama The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow here invests a lot of time and energy in to this account of the hunt for bin Laden, an epic saga that fundamentally holds your attention, but not, necessarily, for nearly three hours.
We open with CIA interrogator Dan (Jason Clarke) putting a captured suspect through his paces, setting an uneasy opening demonstrating the uncompromising American resolve for answers. Enter our main character Maya (Jessica Chastain), recruited straight out of high school, observing these methods for her training, and agreeing with their effectiveness as a means to an ends. From here, she sticks with the program through thick and thin, gaining experience and intelligence, using her new found skills to help eliminate terrorist cells and capture suspects, before setting her sights on the biggest test of all- capturing Osama bin Laden, the big daddy of Al Qaeda.
The film takes a gamble by casting two relative unknowns in the lead roles, while sidelining more prominent acting talent, such as Mark Strong and the late James Gandolfini in basically cameos. With this in mind, it's certainly a blessing that it elicits a strong performance from Chastain as the driven, no nonsense under graduate who becomes even more fierce, wanting bin Laden's blood rather than merely his capture, after losing a friend to a suicide bombing. The performances certainly not being a problem, the trouble is the film's over reliance on the current trend of constantly skipping back/forward in time and outlining it on the screen, as well as giving titles to each new chapter. Somehow, it makes an already complex and very demanding story even more laborious , especially so with it's length in mind.
It's a story that demanded to be told, which the movie going public and anyone interested in world affairs would have a natural interest in, and Bigelow has probably done as good a job as could be hoped with this story. You're just left wondering what it would have took to have managed a perfect adaptation. ***