My Take: Zero Dark Thirty

It has been a while since I’ve said much about a movie beyond some Facebook check-ins and subsequent comments.  I then came across my old website’s movie reviews and couldn’t believe how freakin’ verbose I would get about the most inane of movies.  I seriously wrote a few paragraphs about “The Core” – the fucking Core.  Larry & I happened to catch that movie on cable recently and oh dear God that movie is awful.  Awful.  Not even good-way awful.  2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Deep Impact, Armageddon…those are good trashy movies.  I can watch those over and over.  Man, I misremembered The Core.  Ugh.  Anyway, so not the point.

Larry & I got tickets to go see Zero Dark Thirty this afternoon and it’s a situation where Yay!, I live in LA.  It’s in limited release right now so it can get all the Oscars (ALL of them) for 2012, but only in LA and NYC.  Sorry, rest of the country.

So if you aren’t aware, Zero Dark Thirty is based on the real-life events surrounding the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  There’s been plenty of chatter about the movie now that it’s been released, especially about the torture scenes.  Most of the controversy surrounds whether it was due to the torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) that information was dug up that led to the ultimate locating of OBL.  This point is most definitely in your mind as the picture begins, as after a pretty harsh start with audio of emergency calls from 9/11, we’re immediately in the midst of an enhanced interrogation.  I would say that the movie doesn’t shy away from showing you what likely occurred plenty of times, including a waterboarding that is definitely hard to watch.

It’s Maya’s (played by Jessica Chastain) first day, and she at first appears skittish about the whole thing, but rest assured, Maya is out to catch her man.  Over the next 8 years we are immersed in the many ups and downs of the search for bin Laden.  Maya is committed to the task, or rather obsessed, depending on who you are and if you’re in her way.  There are the setbacks and the shocking continued attacks by al Qaeda, some that directly impact Maya and her team.

Yet this is a story that everyone knows how it ends.  We know that on May 1, 2011, OBL was killed.  Despite knowing exactly that, this movie puts you through the ringer.  The final act of the movie is the assault on the compound where OBL was caught and even though you know the core casualty facts from the news, you still are clutching your armrest hoping it doesn’t all go to shit.

What is very interesting to me is that Kathryn Bigelow (the director of this movie as well as the also-stellar Hurt Locker from a few years back) had been already in pre-production of this movie when May 1, 2011 rolled around.  They had to completely re-focus this movie.  I have no real idea of what this movie was originally going to hinge on, but likely it was going to be more Moby Dick-ish in nature rather than the relatively “happy ending” we ended up getting.  I am glad we ended up getting this movie instead, as I figure a movie made about the hunt for bin Laden and him being still out there would be a rather dark movie to watch.  Still, this movie’s portrayal of 8 years of interrogations will stay with you, as it’s easy to see both sides of the issue.  Can torture yield results?  Sure.  But can it also give you lots of bullshit from someone who will say anything for the pain to stop?  Yep.  And also, aren’t we better off adhering to the Geneva Conventions?   A lot of reports say that the torture didn’t directly lead to the information that helped, but we the general public will likely never really know.

So to end this review on a lighter note, let’s show a picture of Chris Pratt, who played one of the Navy SEALs in the operation at the end.  This is the shape he got in.  DAMN.  This is the same guy who is the doofus Andy on Parks & Recreation.  DAMN.