Slow and emotionally uninvolving. Not my Best Film by a mile.

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2013)

CIA operative Maya's single-mindedness eventually leads to the mission which kills Bin Laden.
Such a short synopsis for such a long film. Katherine Bigelow's movie is nominated for best Film Oscar. It doesn't deserve it, despite the technical expertise with which it is put together. I will tell you why.
This film starts off with a black screen and a welter of sound clips from 9/11 as it was going on. My eyes filled and I choked up. And that was the last point at which I experienced any emotion whatsoever, because this is a cold, clinical, impersonal depiction of someone who gives every indication of being a cold, clinical, impersonal person. I feel sure that this was Bigelow's intention, and she got the performance she wanted from Jessica Chastain, but this did not make this a film in which I had any emotional investment whatsoever. And I really should have had, you know, considering what the events spring from.
It is also a very long film, a film from which at least half an hour could (and should) have been cut, possibly even as much as an hour - this could have been done without sacrificing any essential narrative information.
The sound design is, at times, spectacularly good, at other times spectacularly fumbled, with garbled dialogue so that you don't know what's going on. The last half hour, the mission, is done well, and is very suspenseful even though you know what is going to happen.
What of the torture? I didn't care. Any more than I did when two tears slid down Jessica Chastain's cheeks at the end. And that is Bigelow's failing here, because I should have cared.