Zero Dark Thirty 2012
Originally Zero Dark Thirty was going to be a movie about the frustrating and unsuccessful hunt for Osama bin Laden, but then all of the sudden, bin Laden was killed, and the movie had to take a different turn. This movie is mostly about the investigation that starts in 2001, goes terribly cold, then leads to bin Laden’s house in Pakistan, and finally ends with the nighttime assault on that house by US forces. It is a dramatization, focusing on a young female analyst at the CIA who never gives up hope of finding him, following a hunch for almost the entire time that bin Laden’s messenger will lead them to their target. Even as they are launching SEAL Team Six to Abbotabad, they still aren’t certain bin Laden will even be there.
It is definitely a great story, but it is difficult to put it into a movie. Things like this are probably better as a Frontline documentary on PBS. But at the same time, telling the story as a movie and being able to take a lot of dramatic license has real advantages. The basics of the real story are here, and maybe even more than that. There are a lot of little details that get lost in a movie, especially one like this where there is no voiceover, and nothing more than locations and dates given at the start of a scene. Things just seem to happen, like another analyst comes up with a sheet of paper that gets the entire investigation started again. The main character is working very hard, but we still don’t know exactly what she is doing during those long hours (part of the problem: going to meetings and reading reports doesn’t make for a good movie). Early on there is also a big focus on torture, showing it to be a somewhat effective way of getting information, sometimes not. In the crazy world of the CIA, even when you know you are getting bad information, that might be telling you something (or might not be). In the end, there isn’t a lot of character development; you may not know where all the information is coming from; and you already know the ending. But the movie still keeps your interest, kind of like a crime procedural on TV. The very ending, with the SEAL assault, is pretty confusing with minimal lighting, but seems realistic. Not as dramatic as you might think, no big shootouts, no chase scene, despite a helicopter crash.
The message of the movie seems to be that one determined CIA officer can make a difference, but really this character is an amalgam of different people, and she doesn’t do anything completely on her own. So that’s the biggest fabrication of the film. What it does show is some of what went into tracking down bin Laden and some of the successes and failures of the CIA. It is worth watching for that. I’m on the fence how to rate this movie, but maybe I’ll err on the high side because I enjoyed it and give it an A-. It is not quite as exciting as a completely fictionalized version might have been and not as informative as a documentary.
Written: 19 May 2013
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital