Recently marathoning the first season of Homeland
just prior to seeing Zero Dark Thirty might have been a mistake since I
kept drawing completely unwanted comparisons between Jessica Chastain and
Claire Danes. Despite this, Zero Dark Thirty stands on its own as a film
with few comparables that easily come to mind. As a film relating the hunt for
Osama bin Ladin beginning after the events of September 11, 2001, the movie
begins with a somewhat haunting reminder of that day by using transcripts of
911 calls from the World Trade Center. From there, it's a swift dunk into a
somewhat graphic series of torture scenes before the film heads into the
seemingly safer territory of the politics and bureaucracy that apparently
surround missions such as the search for bin Ladin.
The film centers around Maya, a CIA operative whose initial
assignment turns into a personal grudge as various terrorist attacks in the
Middle East endangers both those she knows and herself. The performance from
Jessica Chastain as the dedicated Maya is impressive but feels slightly flat,
which likely has more to do with a somewhat two-dimensional character than poor
acting skills.
Zero Dark Thirty is a film without apologies for its
gritty subject matter, nor does it allow its audience a break from what can
oftentimes be scenes that are difficult to watch. Don't expect any fluffy or
heartwarming romances here, which might have helped Chastain's character seem
like something more than an overly driven CIA operative. It's nice to have a
female protagonist who's so driven and blissfully free of being oversexed, but
her character almost swings too far the other way and comes across as an
overachiever who doesn't know how to do anything but work.
While Bigelow's directing style works well with Zero Dark
Thirty, the film is at least 30 minutes too long. The film did keep my interest throughout the over
two-and-a-half hour feature, it would periodically start to drift before
something would explode, quite literally, bringing my attention back to the
screen again. The middle third is much too long and could have benefited from
some fairly liberal editing.
All told, Zero Dark Thirty dances the fine line
between documentary and action film. While some creative license was probably
taken with certain events in the film, it is an interesting take on the mission
to locate bin Ladin. There is certainly plenty of opportunity to argue the pros
and cons on the actions taken by the United States, including the use of
torture, the existence of black sites, and other somewhat dubious techniques,
but the film tends to address these issues in a forthright manner rather than
ducking these issues entirely.
