No matter what anyone says, 2012 was a great year for movies. We had action fare like The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, we had comedy hits like 21 Jump Street and Ted, we had excellent dramas like Lincoln and Argo, and then we had those that mixed all genres: Silver Linings Playbook, Django Unchained, and Amour(just kidding, that movie is not funny at all). It seems that, even in 2013, 2012’s best movies still have yet to reveal themselves. That’s how I felt walking into Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, Zero Dark Thirty. Walking out, I was determined I had seen one of the most intense and magnificent films of the year.
Zero Dark Thirty chronicles the 10 year mission of the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden through the eyes of Maya, a CIA agent recruited out of high school. The film is rich in detail, inspired by first-hand accounts of various agents and insiders who participated in the mission. The movie recounts the trial and error, and all the hard work that went into finding the most wanted man in the world. It points all responsibility to this brilliant, young firecracker of a woman, whose persistence led the US Government on a rollercoaster ride, one that eventually ended up at a secret compound in Pakistan.
Jessica Chastain plays Maya. I cannot stress enough how great she is in this film. She doesn’t play the manliest woman in the world, she plays a woman. She’s a badass in her own right. This is her show. She shows us the pain and toughness it took to get what she wanted. One scene she’s laughing in an office with friends, the next she’s screaming at her boss to give her the go ahead on a certain interrogation. To put it bluntly, Chastain is on fire, because, as she states in the film to a bunch of CIA bigwigs in Washington, she’s the “mother-blank that found Bin Laden”.
The supporting roles are great. There’s Jason Clarke as Dan, a lead interrogator who introduces Maya to the world she’s about to immerse herself in. There’s Kyle Chandler as Joseph Bradley, Maya’s boss who recognizes her potential(and is possibly playing the same character he played in Argo). There are great, smaller parts too, from Mark Strong, Mark Duplass and James Gandolfini as CIA Washington people, to members of the now-legendary Seal Team Six, with Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt(Andy of Parks and Recreation) playing Seals leading the mission. They all play their roles well, and help bring the film together and feel grand, like the true epic that it is.
Director Kathryn Bigelow gives the film a constant feel of realism, and it pays off. The movie never feels too stylized, it makes you feel like you’re part of the mission, from 2003 to 2011. Her gritty style of filmmaking could get too out of hand with the wrong director or writer, but she handles herself with precision and a sense of professionalism. The research that her and writer/producer Mark Boal went through is equally impressive. The film is indeed long, running at 2 hours and 37 minutes, but you never feel overwhelmed. You feel like you’re part of this adventure. You’re kept enthralled throughout.
Two things I need to address before I wrap up this review. One: this film, despite what people on the interwebz are saying, is NOT propaganda. Not by a longshot. You wanna see propaganda? Go find Triumph of the Will, a Nazi propaganda documentary directed by Leni Riefenstahl, a film which, by the way, inspired a few shots of a little movie called Star Wars. No, this movie is not propaganda at all. It is a movie that chronicles the events and the hardships that went into capturing this man. The intention being to describe this one woman’s personal mission of capturing one of the most evil men in the world. It wanted to show people all the nitty gritty details of it all, the mistakes that were made in the process, and the politics that go into something like that. It’s not like the film wears an American flag proudly on it’s chest – even the ending is a moment of melancholy for someone like Maya – an ending that strangely echoes that of The Graduate.
Another thing to address is the fact that people are saying this film is pro-torture. This film isn’t pro-torture, nor is it anti-torture. It simply tells the story the way it happened. And, as it happened to be, America under the Bush administration was in fact okay with torturing captured terrorists, while, under the Obama administration, was opposed to torturing terrorists. That’s how it is in real life, and that’s how it happened in the movie. No “I love torture!” scenes. In fact, the majority of people that say that the film is pro-torture or propaganda deserves to be slapped, because they haven’t even seen the freaking movie.
Overall, Zero Dark Thirty is an epic, yet strangely intimate film. It’s painstakingly detailed, and never leaves you bored. Even though you know the ending(I would hope), you still want to find out how it ends. I know I did, and I was not disappointed. This is one film to see, one of the best of 2012, alongside greats like Lincoln, Argo and Django. Seek it out.
Critics Score(based on Rottentomatoes.com): 93%
My Score: 9.5/10
