Zero Dark Thirty Review

Kathryn Bigelow gets it. She understands that information is one of the most important assets in modern warfare. The whole ‘War on Terror’ is a different beast from any previous war in which the U.S. has been engaged. The enemy of today is not clearly defined. Terrorists hide. They sneak about in the dark, dangerous corners of the world, blending in with locals, waiting patiently for a weakness to exploit in the Western Machine. Information on who terrorists are, where they are located, where they will strike next, how they operate, etc. is essential to waging a successful campaign against terrorism. I would argue that obtaining information is just as important as having a well-armed strike force that is capable of storming in and taking out the threat. Bigelow has used this understanding – that information is critical – to craft one of the best modern war films with her newest feature, Zero Dark Thirty.

Obtaining actionable intelligence is not easy. It requires piecing together loose threads of information from many different sources to get the general idea. Then, it requires some sort of confirmation to make sure that the evidence is correct. Only after sifting through tons of data to build a picture, and then verifying that everything is correct, can the guys with guns go eliminate targets. It’s a lot like trying to put together a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle, except most of the pieces from the main puzzle are missing and somebody mixed in pieces of ten different other puzzles just to make the box look full.

Zero Dark Thirty tells the story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the greatest manhunt the United States has ever conducted. You know him as the leader of al-Qaeda and the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. He was known to the CIA as Geronimo.

The story is focused on Maya (Jessica Chastain), a young CIA agent full of fresh ideas and armed with a fiery personality (maybe it’s the red hair). Her job is to track down information that will lead a task force to bin Laden’s doorstep. It’s a task that took twelve years and saw her stationed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Washington DC, and various CIA ‘Black Sites' all over the world. Her agent is a tough firebrand, so single-minded of purpose that nothing will stand in her way. She’s exactly the kind of person you want tracking down terrorists, but you would despise her as an officemate. She will go around, over, and through you to get what she wants, no matter how ridiculous her demands may seem. It’s to her benefit that she is right more often than she is wrong, or else she would just seem like a horrible person. That’s not to say she is Rambo in a miniskirt or some uber-bitch on a power trip. She really believes her fresh approach, tracking down the couriers that bin Laden uses to communicate with al-Qaeda, will work. It’s to her great credit that the threads she pieces together lead SEAL Team Six to bin Laden’s Pakistani compound.

Maya isn’t the only agent in the CIA though. Dan (Jason Clarke) is a seasoned operative who shows newbie Maya the ropes and spends a lot of time getting hard intel from terrorist suspects. He has a Ph.D. and calls detainees “bro.”  The fact that he has a Ph.D. (we aren’t told in what field of study) is telling. All of the agents are intelligent people. After a meeting to discuss the raid on bin Laden’s compound, the director of the CIA (James Gandolfini) remarks “We’re all smart.” It’s a cool acknowledgement that nobody lands that sort of job – where you are making decisions about if, when, and how to kill someone – unless you have your wits about you.

At it’s heart, Zero Dark Thirty is a police or crime procedural. Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal craft a great story in which every new detail, every piece of the puzzle that is assembled by the agents feels fresh, exciting, and hard-earned. It’s an incredibly well-structured and well-paced film that builds tension from start to finish. Bigelow and Boal built the film around interviews and reviews of documents – some of which may or may not include classified information – related to the raid on bin Laden’s compound. These details give the film a sense of realism and believability.

And, when the time comes to gear up and go kill bin Laden, Bigelow shows that she is one of the best at directing action sequences. The members of SEAL Team 6, led by Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt, work methodically through the compound, picking off bad guys one by one. Bigelow knows the scene is inherently intense and avoids the urge to have soaring music and jerky camera shots. It’s refined, detailed, subtle and dramatic. 

Let’s briefly discuss torture.

The first few minutes of the film depict extreme interrogation techniques, and these scenes have generated a lot of ink in the press. Zero Dark Thirty does not glorify torture. Simply, it recognizes that the CIA used aggressive techniques to obtain information from terrorists. Ignoring that point in this movie would seem disingenuous. If anything, Bigelow handles the matter delicately and objectively. She doesn’t shy away from showing how it worked. The CIA agent’s reactions when they conduct harsh interrogations show that torture not only degrades and harms the person being interrogated, but it also affects the agents themselves. Maya can barely look at a suspect in the beginning, but once she realizes it can be an effective tool to extract information, she grudgingly accepts its use. Not to get too spoilerific, but one of the agents transfers back to Washington DC primarily because the torture aspect becomes too much to handle. It seems strange to me that a film that gets so many details right is criticized for depicting the details. 

Bigelow and Boal have crafted their second classic modern war film. Their first was, of course, The Hurt Locker, about explosive ordinance disposal officers stationed in Iraq, which earned both of them a bunch of Oscars back in 2010. Zero Dark Thirty takes the next step in their evolution as a writer/director team. It is an intense film, epic of scope, and finishes with one of the best depictions of combat depictions you are going to see unless you enlist. This is the way that military films should be made. Anybody associated with the military should see this to understand modern combat operations.

4.5 Stars out of 5

Do you think Bigelow and Boal have captured the U.S. military experience? Do you think they condone torture? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter!