Zero Dark Thirty (2012) Review

I love the first 29 films in the Zero Dark franchise so I have really been anticipating Zero Dark Thirty!... sorry had to steal Stephen Fry´s joke from the BAFTA´s. I have really been anticipating this film though, considering how great The Hurt Locker was. The film is based on the hunt and eventual killing of Osama Bin-Laden (ops spoiler), however it was originally going to be the failed hunt for Bin-Laden, until they actually captured and everything had to be re-written.

The film grabs you unlike any film I have ever seen. The opening scene/credits, which I won´t spoil, shut everyone in the audience up instantly and we were all sucked into the film. From there on the film kept building tension, showing the obsessive Maya interrogating and working day and night to try to find him. As time moves through the decade long hunt we get occasional glimpses of real terrorist attacks, which creates a bigger sense of urgency in the film.

Now the film is very controversial due to its depiction of torture. It´s a commonly known fact that the CIA used torture under the Bush administration, however they claim it wasn’t effective in getting Bin-Laden. Firstly, who actually believe anything the CIA says? And secondly, I would argue that the torture scenes in early on in the film don’t actually give useful information and do eventually fail, however once they actually get information, they don’t torture him at all. So is the film saying torture is effective? No, it showed that torture didn’t really work very efficiently, though in some cases of course it does. So all you people out there criticizing the film for being pro-torture, please just be quiet, because you obviously misunderstood those parts of the film.

 

Now just to get it out of the way, this is a great film. It is very well directed, like her previous effort, it is edge of your seat stuff. The much talked about raiding of Bin-Laden´s house is probably the single most thrilling scene in any film last year. Using no music and minimal artificial lightning it felt so incredibly real, and was unbearably tense. I think this wouldn’t have worked as well as did if it wasn’t for the immense build-up done for two hours.

Like in The Hurt Locker, she avidly uses handheld camera and works perfectly for this film, giving a sense of seeing everything through our own eyes, putting us right into every scene. The cinematography in general is very well done, in particular a scene with two helicopters flying through the mountains at night, prior to the raid. Also flawlessy executed, is the score, by Alexandre Desplat, who also did the other great middle-eastern spy movie of last year, Argo. His score is very subtle yet it was a crucial element in building suspense throughout the film.

Now there are some issues I have with the film, keeping it from reaching its true potential and while these didn’t bother me all the much they did still keep it from the masterpiece it could have been. Firstly, the pacing was a bit off. I don’t mind that it is slowly paced, because that just helped build suspense in my opinion, however the problem is that the first hour covered eight years, and so it was moving fairly quick through certain events, but then once it got to 2009, it stayed there for about an hour and the film slowed down severely, before picking up again at a quicker pace during the final act, though that is a very minor complaint. Another issue is that I felt the character of Maya, though wonderfully acted by Chastain, was a bit underdeveloped. While I am fully fine with it not being a character study in the same way as The Hurt Locker, I felt the fact that we spent so much time with her, yet knew so little about her was a bit frustrating. That being said I do see why they choose to do it like that, considering the fact that this job does basically consume her whole life and so it seems like there isn’t really much in her life outside this, which they do address at a point. While she does have a character arc, it seemed like it was all in the first hour and then seemed static for the rest of the film. That being said I thought there was a great emotional pay-off with her character at the end.

 My final issue is that some of the dialogue seemed kind of awkward and unnatural at times and did at times seem just like filler-dialogue, necessary only to get to a major event at the end of the scene. Also there was an excessive use of “fuck” which seemed to be used to make Maya seem like a strong character, but it was a bit much in some parts.

That being said, these are all fairly minor complaints, which nowhere near ruined the film, though mildly hurting in. However it is still a very well made film, gripping to the end and superbly acted.

4.5/5