Underwhelming if not disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (30 January 2013)

Zero Dark Thirty has a lame beginning- a couple of minutes of 911 calls during 9/11. The ending is lame too. What happens in the 2:40 hours in between isn't all that different.
For the first hour we experience nothing but CIA failures. And it puts our main character, Maya, in the center of every significant event during several years. But there is one bright spot- a clue about one of Osama's couriers, a clue obtained through torture.
During the next hour we see the CIA follow this clue as it gets them closer and closer to the courier. We also see some mild intra agency politics and war of wills. Nothing spectacular but the aim here is to glorify our heroine as the sole genius in the agency.
The last 30 minutes or so the order is given to go ahead and attack Osama's compound and we witness the operation. But not even that is remotely as thrilling as it should be. It's a very slow operation, performed not by the best of teams but by a goofy bunch of soldiers motivated solely by--get this--Maya's confidence! When it's all over, you are left with very little.
A lot could have been done with this story. The filmmakers chose to do nothing with it. Sure there is the issue of torture, but what is the message? We are shown some scenes of torture light, performed by some agent with a PhD who cares more about the life of some monkeys he plays with. And the actor who plays him has one hell of a time properly articulating his lines. Even though we are told that this isn't some Obama propaganda film, that is belied by one scene were agents are talking during a televised interview of candidate Obama during which he says that waterboarding is torture and there will be no more torture. I guess in Hollywood drone bombing is better than waterboarding. Then the director shows countless scenes during the raid where the soldiers kill women and children, and once dead shoot them again. Why? What's point of focusing on that so often? And what's the point of centering the movie on this Maya character (other than Hollywood's favorite pet project- grl power)? She is everywhere but doesn't do a whole lot. Why is the team that is assigned the Osama operation portrayed as a bunch of dummies?
With this story, they could have made a thrilling patriotic action movie, or a sober and serious movie critical of certain policies. Zero Dark Thirty does neither. It's a slow, lazy, pointless movie that doesn't ask tough questions let alone provide answers.