Zero Dark Thirty

[meatwadsprite]

This one floored me when I saw it last week, the story reminds me a lot of one of my favorites Zodiac. In that the protagonist' search for a mass murderer, transforms into an obsession that ultimately claims their own life. Like Zodiac, it's laced with terrific performances, heavy thematic depth, and clocks in at a little less than three hours with not a minute to spare. However the bad guy doesn't get off so easily here. The grand finale (35 minutes +) follows a team of Navy Seals as they breach Osama Bin Laden's compound and kill him. The entire sequence will probably be the coolest damn thing you'll see in theaters for a long time to come.

4.5

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/torture-in-zero-dark-thirty.jpg

[Powdered Water]

Liked it eh? I didn't love it. Actually thought it a bit of a weaker entry from Bigelow. Parts were pretty good. I say Chastain is well deserving of her Oscar nod and may even win the sucker. And why not? She dominated almost every scene she was in.

I'd give it a 3.

[meatwadsprite]

Yeah, I would say she's a shoe in for the oscar. I thought Jason Clarke was really good too, the dynamic between the two was perfect to me. Right from the intro, Clarke's character is so worn down from his job and then years later Maya has reached the same point and she keeps going.

[Powdered Water]

Not sure if I agree she's a shoe in, but she must be right there for sure. I think I still have one more lady to see from the Best Actress category, but yeah, she's been the best so far.


EDIT: I take it back, I've seen all five now, and she's my pick. Hope she gets it.

[The Prestige]

This sounds like it has a lot of potential. I'll check this out as soon as it hits the cinemas over here.

[Skepsis93]

I really liked this. Another fantastic Jessica Chastain performance, she really held this thing together. Slow build but it's on a constant upward curve in terms of tension; it grips and never really lets go. Loved the way they ended it.

4

[Agrajag]

This one needed to take a lesson from Argo about how to tell a thrilling story. It definitely doesn't deserve to be considered for a best film award this year. The catch is that, in Argo, all the edge-of-your-seat scenes were made up.

[seanc]

While I didn't have the same love for Zero Dark as many have, I did enjoy it quite a bit. I also agree with meatwadsprite that the last 40 minutes is outstanding. For me it managed to do what Argo did not, and that is to never question its authenticity. The last half hour of Argo seemed so contrived to me that it completely took me out of the film for the entire climax. I would give Zero Dark 8/10, it was probably one of my 12 faves of the year. Argo , along with Life Of Pi, is my most overrated of the year.

[Dtwizzy2k8]

Zero Dark was a good movie but where it fell short was in it's slow pacing and sometimes monotonous scenes of dialogue and interrogation. Not good, creative dialogue either, but rather boring dialogue in the same vein as CSI or something. Also, the movie was a bit too long.
Granted, I believe these elements were necessary to some extent to convey the laboriously tedious tone that reflects the struggle taken over a decade to capture Bin Laden so I can cut it some slack. But still, I would call this a good movie but not a spectacular one.

[Agrajag]

The entire bit about her writing on the boss' office window was one that just rubbed me the wrong way. Was there really no other way to suggest the concept of so much time passing than to make Maya look like your typical frustrated woman having to deal with useless men? She worked for the department for how long and didn't know things like this are crushingly tedious? It kept suggesting that she's chosen the wrong profession and needed some Midol. You could just sense the feeling of the boss... "Yeah, that's that crazy Maya again."

[teeter_g]

I really enjoyed this movie. 9/10

[Bull]

Justified torture and waterboarding. It wouldn't surprise me if it was CIA funded

[seanc]

Justified torture and waterboarding. It wouldn't surprise me if it was CIA funded
Nonsense. Torture is a very small part of this film and a part that our protagonist is clearly not comfortable with. Saying Zero Dark Thirty is pro torture is like saying Bugsy is pro organized crime. Or more precisely like saying The Aviator is pro being a shut in and pissing in bottles. It is an aspect of what was happening during this time, and one I'm glad Bigelow was not afraid to address.

[Bull]

Seanc, I'm not the only one shares the views I expressed, they were even addressed during the golden globe ceremonies. This year we have been assualted with American propaganda, not only in Zero dark thirty but also in Lincoln, and Argo (see comments in argo thread)

[seanc]

Seanc, I'm not the only one shares the views I expressed, they were even addressed during the golden globe ceremonies. This year we have been assualted with American propaganda, not only in Zero dark thirty but also in Lincoln, and Argo (see comments in argo thread)
We are always assaulted with American propaganda, you will get no argument from me on that. As I have never lived in another country I cant speak to whether this goes on all over the world or not, if I were a betting man I would bet we are not the only country who thinks more of itself than we should. These are three very different movies and I would be happy to go into what I liked and disliked, what I believed and didn't believe about each one. Concerning Zero, are you suggesting it is pro torture? or are you suggesting that we never used torture? or are you suggesting that we used too much torture?

[meatwadsprite]

All three of those films are extremely critical of America.

[TheUsualSuspect]

I was honestly bored with this film until they found Bin Laden's compound. From then on, it was thrilling. Just sitting and waiting, deciding what to do with the information, is he in there or not. The Raid on the compound was great too.

Although, I didn't love it and found Hurt Locker to be better than this.

3

[Filmigos]

I agree. I thought it was boring and over-acting from Chastain. She wasn't believable to me.

[Gabrielle947]

Not a bad film but I didn't feel that it covered 10+ years and it didn't seem like a film about capturing one of the greatest terrorists.I support K.Bigelow but I hope that she will top both Hurt Locker and ZDT in the future.

[CelluloidChild]

I enjoyed watching Zero Dark Thirty - at least most of the movie. But ultimately I found it disjointed.

From the beginning - the agent Maya's initial posting - through to the decision to launch the raid on Bin Laden's compound was captivating. But the actual raid by the Navy Seals and their return seemed like a separate film that didn't fit too well with the first.

In fact, I found the TV movie 'Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden' to be far more suspenseful in its treatment of the stakeout of the Abbotabad compound and the raid itself than Zero Dark Thirty's. (There are criticisms of both films in terms of accuracy and since they deal with undercover agents it's hard to know what is true and what is fabricated or speculation.)

I find it interesting that all three Kathryn Bigelow movies of the last decade are military movies. The first two - K-17: The Widowmaker and The Hurt Locker - are practically devoid of female characters. Perhaps Bigelow tried to compensate for this lack by centering Zero Dark Thirty around Maya's compulsive search for Bin Laden. This is one of the most contentious parts of her and Mark Boal's plot - creating Maya as the sole CIA hero and downplaying the CIA team effort.

Focusing the story on Maya left Bigelow with a problem when it came to the climactic raid - because Maya was left behind in the Afghanistan base and, for the most part, off-screen. She regains her central focus only in the last couple minutes as apparently being the only one on the base who can identify the corpse of UBL.

I did not feel that Bigelow and Boal were successful in creating an integrated plot from beginning to end. Perhaps if the plot had included - as the Seal Team Six film did - the agents who were supposedly staking out the UBL compound up to the time of the raid, it would have allowed for a more seamless story line. Then again, this would have taken a bit of the focus away from Maya. This might not have been a bad thing - in terms of making a complete film, and also for Zero Dark Thirty's credibility.

[syj]

Nonsense. Torture is a very small part of this film and a part that our protagonist is clearly not comfortable with. Saying Zero Dark Thirty is pro torture is like saying Bugsy is pro organized crime. Or more precisely like saying The Aviator is pro being a shut in and pissing in bottles. It is an aspect of what was happening during this time, and one I'm glad Bigelow was not afraid to address.

I agree with seanc here, for the most part. I wouldn't say that torture is a small part of the film, but it certainly doesn't "justify" torture, like Bull said. The way it was shot, especially the beginning scenes, is intended to make the viewer sympathetic to the person being tortured. The CIA character is shot as menacing and harsh, while the character being tortured is shot in close-ups and you can see the humanity there. This isn't to say the film is anti-torture either, because at this point, the way the film is shot is to justify Jessica Chastain's initial unease with the process. As she gets more comfortable, torture is shown in a more perfunctory manner, usually on grainy videotapes. I thought Bigelow did a great job with this, and allowed the viewers to make their own judgments on the methods that were used, and whether they were justified or not.

I thought the film as a whole was very good. Bigelow has shown a gift for developing tension in her last two films, and Chastain was a revelation. Her character was developed really gradually and in an interesting manner, and it was refreshing that her character wasn't a female CIA agent, but a CIA agent who happens to be female. (Which, probably not coincidentally, is how Bigelow wants to be seen: not as a female director, but as a director who happens to be female. That probably won't be the case until there are more mainstream female directors, but that's another discussion entirely.)

4

[TheDavePhan]

This was a good movie, although I cant decide if id ever want to watch it again...

[ccs880]

I enjoyed this film more than argo. I found argo to be a let down.

[Will Frey]

I thought Chastain was solid throughout her performance. Overall I'd give the movie a 7 out of 10. RIP James Galdolfini