Review: "Zero Dark Thirty" is grim terse drama about hunt for Bin Laden

"Zero Dark Thirty" R
Katherine Bigalowe (The Hurt Locker) returns with another September 11 inspired drama with some thriller elements, this one called Zero Dark Thirty, after 30 minutes passed midnight, the alleged time that Navy Seal Team Six decimated Osama Bin Laden's house and killed him in 2011. Oirignally, the movie was changed when Osama was captured and killed. The movie would have been the fruitless efforts to never find him, had it been the original premise. It also would have shown more obviously that forced interrogations and torture don't work. One of the criticisms of the film, and the reason it may be snubbed come Oscar time, are scenes of torture which seem to imply that it works and the CIA was able to get info and intel from the interrogations. Actually having just seen it, and had the critics also seen it, they would have realized that the torture scenes don't work and they're forces to rely on the Mary Sue like CIA director lady who controls the story, as it is based on true events but isn't really true. The CIA lady an an archetype and a conglomeration of several key people, not just one lady, although it's inferred she has a lot of support. The Seals are actually never called 'Team Six' in the film, interestingly enough, and sport beards and don't talk the lingo common in war movies. Not one 'Hurah'? But there is a joke. At one point they are flying in a chopper toward the target one the leader jokes, 'how many of you have been in a heli (helicopter) crash?' to which most of them raise a finger. Even so, the story is not an action picture but is a drama with a lot of odd close calls until the last half hour. which apparently is the raid and the new footage they shot later when they caught Bin Laden. The film doesn't advoate torture as the torture doesn't work. They get the informant's name from other means, mostly by paying off some sheik dude and from some other backroom dealing.
Review by Kal Kat