Kathryn Bigelow Adapts Modern History's Greatest Manhunt Into A Crackerjack Thriller!

Rating: 9/10 (6 May 2015)

Never before has the war-on-terror been shot with such a cold dose of reality. As entertainment, Kathryn Bigelow's engrossing and symbolically astute Zero Dark Thirty is a great accomplishment - a somber, black-winged benediction for what we might count as a lost decade. It depicts the long-lasting struggle of terrorism with immense veracity - the greatest manhunt in modern history playing catalyst to a gripping tale of obsession both dark and dangerous.
With Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal present a different kind of espionage environment - one that follows a fictionalized CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain) recruited specifically to ferret out the architect of the 9/11 attacks – Osama Bin Laden. It's one filled with paper work, meetings, and sifting through a never ending stream of intelligence. But it's also one where the stakes are always high, danger is found at every turn, where a hunch can lead to a breakthrough and misinformation can lead to wasted years of chasing ghosts. Through Maya we share the successes and frustrations of tracking down the head of a snake so twisted and slippery it's of no wonder that it took over a decade to get a strangle hold on him. Yet Maya represents more than the CIA, she is America herself: wounded, driven and in conflict on how to move on after killing the bogeyman that haunted their nightmares for too long.
Kathryn Bigelow takes the procedural model and brushes away every unnecessary detail - rarely glorifying and never dumbing down or 'Hollywoodizing' important tidbits of the plot to get a rise out of the audience – leaving behind a potent film that never feels bogged down by its own complexity. Even though the outcome is common public knowledge, we are enthralled by the way the story is spooled out. Even at a runtime of three hours, Bigelow displays an uncanny sense of pacing and rhythm, tightly cutting back and forth between Maya's exhausting hunt for bin Laden and her constant inner-struggle to never give up, even when faced with a complete dead end that promises her nothing. All this leads up to the film's most audacious set-piece, an almost unbearably tense, moment by-moment re-creation of the raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But Bigelow is careful not to exploit the cathartic potential of the raid, and the movie ends on a note that's wonderfully dissonant with the expectations of an action movie crowd.
Maya is a tough cookie, but by casting the pale, red-haired, rather waifish Jessica Chastain, the director makes the unstressed point that strong women sometimes come in deceptively frail packages. She plays Maya with stone-cold intensity, fuelled by anger directed towards a target so elusive that he is more a phantom than a terrorist leader. Zero Dark Thirty rests on Chastain's shoulders, but she's always interacting with strong talent and that only helps to keep the film level and never without a pulse.
Zero Dark Thirty remains an immaculately put together work of art that deserves all the attention it was given.