Film: Zero Dark Thirty

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Genre: Drama
Source: USA (2012)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Glynn Place Stadium Cinema
Grade: A

Zero Dark Thirty is definitely one of the most well-made films of 2012. In some ways it's a hard movie to make the year after Bin Laden's death, because the dramatic tension of the chase is very much sapped when you know exactly how the chase ends. So it's a credit to Bigelow and the film's screenwriters that "tense" is still one of the most fitting adjectives for the film. From the opening scenes of Jessica Chastain watching a detainee be tortured by the CIA (a truly harrowing scene) to the documentary-like raid on Bin Laden's compound at the end, the film does an excellent job presenting the question of how the most wanted man in the world was finally found and drawing the drama out of that. It's a credit to the film, and to Chastain's focused portrayal of Maya, that questions such as whether torture is a moral method of obtaining information or what political policies are most expedient in conducting a war are not really addressed. Those are certainly questions worthy of debate and fit subjects for films themselves, but Bigelow does not want to get bogged down in the morality of war. For Maya, the search for Bin Laden is beyond politics, and torture is just another tool in her arsenal. The audience has time to stop and contemplate those bigger questions, but she really does not.

Just as Lincoln was anchored by Daniel Day Lewis, so too is this film absolutely elevated by Chastain's performance. The film is so tightly executed that Bigelow has no time for much characterization beyond Maya's professionalism, drive, and determination, but Chastain does bring greater weight to a role that could otherwise get lost in the bigger picture. She makes it her own story, not just a political history, and so the fire and speed that propels the film along seems to come from her.

That said, I wish we had had time for some deeper characterization. Why is she so driven when so many others in her position are able to move on to other aspects of the job? Where does she come from? And how the hell do you get recruited to the CIA out of high school?

As with the moral questions above, I know that's not really the story the film is interested in telling, so I can't fault it too much, but the lack of character depth for so many of the figures in the film are what stopped it from being one of my favorite 2012 films. I can't criticize the filmmaking--the opening audio of 9/11 phone calls being played over a black screen was many times more effective than replaying the planes crashing into the World Trade Center, and I feel like there are no wasted shots, most evidently in the astonishing final 20 minutes or so of the film--so I would not be surprised or disappointed if the movie won the Best Picture Oscar in February. But for me Argo and Les Miserables both top it in terms of being films I can't wait to watch again.

Still . . . this is how you make a movie.

Alternate Film Title: "Hey, You Got Your Comedians in My Bin Laden Movie!"