What a Disappointment!

Rating: 4/10 (3 February 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty is the highly anticipated story of the hunt and eventual "we got him," moment for Osama Bin Laden, and Kathryn Bigelow's big movie to follow her great Iraq war movie, "The Hurt Locker." I was extremely disappointed to say the least.
The Good. Their were only a few bright spots in this movie. For one, it showed the CIA's supposed "torture/enhanced interrogation," techniques without taking a Hollywood, far left, holier than thou approached and acknowledged some of the usefulness. That surprised me actually. Second, it is a real life event and that will always make people come out to see it. I was also pretty happy they didn't turn this into a "worship Obama," movie as a lot of people thought they would do, but i think a lot was due to that very thought.
The Bad. You would think after the success of "The Hurt Locker," Bigelow would make a really\ great, stirring movie, and seemed like an obvious choice. This was a movie that was a gift to a Director, and had the potential of being a huge movie because of the feelings that 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden provoke in Americans.
This did not deliver! For several reasons. First, it was straight up boring most of the time. It felt piece mealed together without any kind of rhythm or flow to it. Second, they should really have hired a sound engineer and put some kind of score to it, what we got instead was that dull, indy problem, of many moments of that turns many movie goers off and makes them look at their watch or think about what they need to get done when they get home.
Third, the acting was bad. Plain and simple. Frankly, I was thinking with all the awards and accolades Bigelow picked up she actually might be able to pull in some big time talent, but then again maybe the writing was crap. There were moments that should have been big ones, or make you want to cheer, but for some reason the actors, especially Jessica Chastain, couldn't pull it off.
Lastly, for some reason they tried to make this some kind of Female empowerment movie. The main character, played by Jessica Chastain, spends the entire movie trying to tell everyone in the CIA, etc, how to do their jobs, and how she is right, etc. She gets increasingly hostile through the movie only to be vindicated in the end. I have no reason why they chose that route, it might have worked if they spent the money to hire talent, but it was pushed to the point where she just became quite annoying at best. There was very little character development and nothing that really makes you feel anything towards anyone in the movie, with maybe an exception to the Seal team, but they really were left out of the movie altogether except for the very end.
Something about the disjointedness just says to me they probably changed focus, or rewrote/worked the movie half way through production, or just plain hurried through the whole thing. It leaves me to believe Bigelow's Hurt Locker praise was a one time only flash in the pan.
I know this movie is going to continue some high marks to the movie going sheep out there. They always say they love a movie that someone else tells them they are suppose to love. Don't buy into that crap. Form your own opinion. It was just a very dull, poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly directed movie. In fact, The National Geographic Channel put out their own movie based on the same events and they are pretty comparable, The Nat Geo one may even be better, and I am sure they did it on a smaller budget.
I give it a 4. It was boring, lackluster, and disjointed at best. This movie isn't going to win any awards, and if it is ever even nominated it proves Hollywood doesn't even know it's own business anymore. Steal it off the internet or wait for it to come to DVD. Don't waste your money going to the theater for this turd.