Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, stars Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, and Joel Edgerton. From the director that brought us The Hurt Locker we now have a film that feels like a hard-hitting sequel. While it's a story that should be told, I'm not quiet sure it needed to be told this way.
Plot:
For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man.
I love a good war story, as weird and sick as that sounds, I just do. I enjoyed The Hurt Locker and thought Jeremy Renner did a fantastic job as the wacky bomb guy, but I didn't feel the same about this latest middle east edition. The first 45 minutes of the film are tedious and crawl at a snail's pace. I'm not saying I need a bunch of action and naked men to make me happy, but I do need something a bit more gripping then what was offered. I have no clue what the CIA jargon was that took up a good portion of this film. Not to say I'm simple minded or stupid, ok maybe a little, but I've never been to CIA school and I'm not going to know half of the things you're prattling on about. Is this a movie for everyone or for a select crowd? It felt like you needed a degree in war tactics and foreign affairs to figure out who was doing what to whom and why.
Aside from the CIA ongoings, we have a woman fresh out of school who's in Iraq and taking part in her first torture/interrogation. Water boarding was first on the menu and while it looked like a romping good time you can tell the dude who's on the receiving end isn't singing yippie doda day. As we move on with the Black Site super secret locations we find that Jessica is part of the special unit that's tasked with finding the top terrorists, gathering intel and hunting down the most wanted out there, which includes bin Laden.
There's a lot of covert, black-ops types of ongoings, buying of information from folks that have relations with the terrorist groups and more torture and punishments. You do get a good picture of just how hard it is to track someone down that's staying off the grid. TV shows make it seem as thought his should be some easy job to perform, but as we learn this is not the case. When someone wants to stay off gone they will, and bin Laden was one of them.
We all know that the terrorist mastermind was taken out by our military boys. When the film finally gets to the day of the OP everything happens fast and gets intense, with all the build-up leading to this point. Jessica was nominated for her role in this film, but I really don't think she deserves it. Not to say she's a bad actress or anything, but there's not much emotion going on in the film. She has one scene of yelling at her boss but aside from that she's playing a tough bitchy chick who's goal is to find bin Laden and bring him down, which took years of her life and everyone else involved with this mission.
I get it, it's a story that needed to be told but at the same time I was quiet bored with the delivery. With five Oscar Nominations there must be something more here that I failed to see. If you liked The Hurt Locker and you enjoy watching people talk nonstop about the comings and goings of terrorists then you'll get more out of this film then I did.
Getting 3 and 1/2 'back in the box' Sheep
KD
