A good but dry film, igniting overreactions from all sides

Rating: 7/10 (12 January 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty was a gritty, docudrama-like movie much in the flavor of Black Hawk Down and Munich. Unlike the Hollywood fiction formula of old, you won't find a "love interest" and "comic relief." It is a dry film - meaning the plot had very little bandwidth and the characters were all business.
As such, it is a not a theme that greatly interests me, or attracts me to the theater. In fact I go to the theater to escape dwelling on these types of realities, not immerse myself in them.
Nonetheless I'm compelled to voice my opinion on this one because the film is harshly criticized for an assortment of reasons. possibly some even conflicting. I thought the film portrayed itself exactly as Katheryn Bigelow (whose career I've followed since Near Dark, not since The Hurt Locker like most younger people) advertised. "Boots on the ground." The story is very zoomed in, not zoomed out.
I avoid movies like this because I have very little interest in the political opinions of Hollywood (or of anyone else for that matter). Opinions are opinions, and I give none more or less weight than my own, frankly. Harlan Ellison is quoted of saying, "You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion." Which is an agreeable notion, but it depends on the quality of the information, doesn't it? And how can you confirm that information? If one is misinformed, his or her "informed" opinion may be of nor more value than an ignorant one.
I never felt that Zero Dark Thirty was taking any stand for or against torture. There were no debates or analysis or reflection between the characters on the merits or ethics of water boarding and other methods of duress interrogation. It's only risk was to choose to depict members of the CIA using torture as it is commonly defined, and there are strong opinions that we did no such thing. Those opinions, I daresay, are based entirely on what one wants to believe, not on facts. The facts, unfortunately, are elusive. I assume we did torture, based on my gut feeling on how various officials reacted to the question, especially President Bush. But it's just an assumption on my part - I am not informed, and neither are most people.
So Zero Dark Thirty made some assumptions, based largely on information fed by the Obama Administration (which is an eyebrow-raiser for most Republicans of course) and built a story about the long and arduous hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Despite claims to the contrary, there was nothing political about how the movie played this out. I was actually quite relieved. It didn't point accusing fingers, act ashamed, or express pride. Intelligence mistakes that occurred were human ones. It was an extremely difficult hunt, with CIA members sometimes chasing bad information that looked pretty good at the time. In fact, the final attack on Osama's compound (which was amazingly powerful) was itself an exercise in probability, not fact. We didn't know for sure Osama was that compound, but there were lots of compelling reasons to think he was. Similarly, the CIA didn't know for sure that Iraq wasn't hiding WMD production, but there were lots of compelling reasons to think they were. In one case we made a judgment call and lost, in another we made a judgment call and won. I'm sorry to say, that's the way the game is usually played.
So if you like this genre, this is a movie well worth seeing. If you flatly refuse to believe we tortured anybody in the war against al qaeda, probably you will be angered by the film, but I'm betting you haven't a shred of proof one way or the other. I don't, and neither do the filmmakers. So put your crystal balls down and try to enjoy.