Zero Dark Thirty (2012, Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton) – Movie Review

The saga of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 11 attacks in 2001 makes for an extremely powerful, intelligent, disturbing movie, but somehow it doesn’t quite hit the heights of director Kathyrn Bigelow’s earlier 2008 six-Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. Jessica Chastain is excellent in a huge star role as CIA operative Maya, but maybe she’s not quite an Oscar winner or Actress of the Year material. She won the Golden Globe as Best Actress and was Oscar nominated.

The problem with the film and performance is Kathyrn Bigelow’s in-your-face documentary-style approach that keeps the cameras just pointing at the action, the scenes and the facial expressions, so you never get inside the characters or learn anything about their internal or personal lives. On the plus side, though, of course the filming style brings an incredibly vital ‘you were there’ immediacy to the movie. The re-staging of the US Navy SEAL attack on Bin Laden’s fortress home in May 2011 is brilliantly, thrillingly done. But the fact that we know the outcome and remember the news footage slightly reduces the otherwise nerve-shattering tension.

The script’s moral ambiguities are good: especially (1) that the heroine wouldn’t have known about the clues that lead to Bin Laden if she hadn’t been operating in the era of American torture of prisoners, now banned by Obama, and (2) that Bin Laden’s body is positively identified by the very same woman who had spent almost all her entire 12-year CIA career hunting him and had given the military the facts and her 100 per cent positive viewpoint for the go-ahead of the assault on his home. Irony indeed!

The epic-scale movie is long (157 minutes) but not unnecessarily so, and, without any flab, it does keep up a strong, dynamic momentum. It would be easy for the viewer to get lost in this long narrative but Bigelow is careful to ensure we’re keeping up with the plot and characters, and scatters many helpful titles throughout to keep us informed and up to speed. It’s not really an entertainment, but it carves out its space as serious, essential viewing, and one of the films of its year.

Joel Edgerton, Edgar Ramirez, Chris Pratt and Jennifer Ehle co-star.

http://derekwinnert.com/the-hurt-locker-classic-film-review-549/

http://derekwinnert.com/point-break-film-review/

(C) Derek Winnert 2014

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/