Critics and liberal public seduced by overrated journalism exercise masquerading as compelling drama

Rating: 5/10 (22 September 2013)

Emboldened by her big Oscar win for "Hurt Locker,"' Director Kathryn Bigelow was determined to fry some bigger fish, by taking on the herculean task of chronicling the 10 year manhunt for America's most wanted man: Osama bin Laden. Initially, Bigelow partnered with screenwriter Mark Boal, to write about the failed attempt to catch Bin Laden at Tora Bora. Everything changed when bin Laden was caught and disposed of, so Boal scrapped the Tora Bora script and hashed out a new one rather quickly, featuring the now famous mission that resulted in bin Laden's demise.
Bigelow's strategy was to create a composite character based on the exploits of numerous CIA agents who were involved in tracking down and eventually uncovering bin Laden's infamous lair. She ended up creating 'Maya' (Jessica Chastain), after hearing about one particular female CIA agent involved in bin Laden's capture. As Rex Reed correctly notes in "'The Observer," there was no evidence that the hunt for bin Laden was the exclusive province of one woman. In Reed's opinion, Bigelow's desire to create a "Wonder Woman" character backfires, as it ends up that "Ms. Chastain's stoic, textbook approach to the role does nothing to illuminate or enlighten."
The bigger problem with 'Zero Dark Thirty' is that it's inherently undramatic. Maya is never pitted against a concrete antagonist, whom she must butt heads with. In its place are a coterie of both individual terrorists whom we get to know for only a short time (Ammar Al-Baluchi, who's water boarded due to his 9/11 connections, or faceless terrorists, such as the ones whom attempt to assassinate Maya, when she attempts to drive out of the US Embassy in Pakistan). Bigelow ends up connecting her fictional Maya through sleight of hand: suddenly she just happens to be eating dinner at the Islamabad Hotel, when it's blown up in 2008 or her good CIA friend Jessica, is killed in the 2009 Camp Chapman attack. It's all good journalism, but Maya's individual drama, feels forced. When Maya does butt heads, it's merely with one of her CIA bosses, who's slow to act on her intelligence, due to orders from above (the new Obama administration certainly is proceeding too slowly for the veteran analyst's tastes).
After a series of drawn out CIA torture scenes, as well as the aforementioned historical scenes straight from the CNN breaking news play book, Bigelow's and Boal's journalistic "research," pays some dividends when we're made privy to the way in which the CIA (Maya) tracks down bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed, who eventually leads them to bin Laden himself. Perhaps the most interesting scene in the film, is the way in which Ahmed is tracked down while driving his SUV (he's located through his cell phone signals).
While I would argue Bigelow is way overrated in the script department, she does know how to use a camera. The final scene, where the crack team of Navy Seals invades bin Laden's compound, and finishes him off, is expertly choreographed and actually somewhat nail biting (even though everyone knows the outcome).
Still, I'll argue Ms. Bigelow is a vastly overrated director, another Hollywood "flavor of the month" (usually "flavors of the month," can last a good number of years, before they lose their taste). It's understandable, given the fact that there have been few female directors singled out as significant by the Hollywood powers that be, that suddenly Bigelow finds herself in the spotlight. In Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow and Boal mistakenly assumed that by merely clipping a few newspaper articles and conducting a few interviews with people connected to the CIA and then inserting a composite character into the action, that's enough to create a compelling story. Their 'mistake' still paid dividends: the overwhelming body of critics as well as a liberal general public, overjoyed by the liberal Obama administration's "win," rubber stamped an ordinary film, as a masterpiece!