Over the last several days there has been a lot of talk concerning the torture scenes depicted in Sony Pictures' Zero Dark Thiry, which hit five theaers yesterday to a record breaking Wednesday opening. Now, amid the convroversy, three US senators are getting into the debat as Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, along with colleagues John McCain and Carl Levin, have written a letter to Michael Lynton, Sony Pictures Chairmen and CEO, calling the early Oscar frontrunner "grossly inaccurate and misleading."
The senators aren't the first to accuse the film of misreprenting the facts. Screenwriter Mark Boal, who won an Oscar for 2009's The Hurt Locker, has admitted to altering certain aspects of the manhunt in favor of his creative license. The letter from the senators note this claim, but then quickly elinimate it, accusing Boal of working both sides of the situation to fit his own agenda, ultimately hoping to have his cake and eat it too.
But you have to wonder if the senators are giving the film a little too much credit, as the studio admitted early and often that the film was not a documentary, but merely a re-telling.
But on the flip side the film begins with the line 'based on first-hand accounts of actual events' and both Bigelow and Boal had unparalled access to CIA documents and amazing assistence from the operatives. This alone could call the 're-telling' into question as few political films hit the big screen without at least a small dose of a hidden agenda (ask Micahel Moore).
But at the end of the day the studio is likely loving the constant controversy covering their small $20 million movie. It's free publicity, and all you ever want is for people to be talking about your movie. This article justifies that point ten-fold.
