Just three years after directing the critically acclaimed The Hurt Locker, which took home six Oscars that year, out of nine nominations, Kathryn Bigelow returns to some familiar territory. This time, though, instead of looking at the life of a bomb squad unit during the war, she is delving into "the greatest manhunt in history." This film was originally supposed to be about the FAILED decade long search for Osama Bin Laden (called UBL in the film). When UBL was killed in a successful raid in May 2011, the screenplay was completely revamped.
Bigelow has, once again, paired with Mark Boal, who won an Oscar for writing The Hurt Locker. Again, Boal has put together a very compelling script that chronicles the decade long search for Bin Laden. It is an amazing task to sum up an entire decade in a 157 minute film, but Boal has successfully done it. His script very adeptly strings together several plots over the course of the ten year span. Even when the dates jump from 2004 to 2008, you still can follow exactly what was missed in that gap with one eloquently phrased sentence.
Though I could talk about the script for hours, I think it wouldn't mean as much without an amazing cast to convey the strength of the script. They got that and more with A-grade performances from Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, and more! It didn't hit me just how hard these performances were until the first jump from 2004 to 2008. It must have been so difficult for these actors not to play the exact same character for each segment of the film. The incredibly nuanced differences from each actor made each segment feel as if it were taking place further into the exhaustive search. Even though we had only been watching for 45 minutes, we felt the anguish of four fruitless years of searching. Jessica Chastain has always been on my radar ever since I saw The Debt (2011), but I never expected this strong of a leading performance from her. She is truly making a name for herself in this industry, and I can't wait to see more from her.
I cannot say enough about Katheryn Bigelow as a director. She has always been an amazing director and I am so glad that she is finally getting the recognition she deserves. I still contest that her greatest directorial credit is Strange Days (1995), which was written by her ex-husband James Cameron. It took her another 14 years to garner any recognition for her direction in The Hurt Locker (2009). Now, rightfully so, she is getting another shot at the coveted DGA Award. Though, I don't think it is her year again, I think she has put forth a visually stunning effort with Zero Dark Thirty. Some shots in this movie are unforgettable, most that come to mind though are a tad spoiler-y, so I'll refrain. Enjoy the ones I included.
What may be considered the best achievement in this film is the recreation of the assault on Osama Bin Laden's compound. The real assault took 25 minutes to complete and was captured via video cameras on the soldiers persons. This video was shown to the filmmakers and they recreated it as best they could. In the film, the assault takes roughly 25 minutes and is shot in a combination of regular and night vision shots. The blend of the two gives a great view to what SEAL Team 6 was actually seeing during the raid and made the viewer feel like part of the action.
One thing I was afraid about going in to this movie was the chance of political bias in the movie. As someone who is fairly neutral when it comes to politics, I like to find something that can stay as neutral as possible. I really thought that this movie did a great job of presenting the facts as they were and not being politically motivated. That being said, they did include a lot of real news footage of Bush/Obama that worked really well at making this film seem more real. Intercutting news reels was a great idea on Bigelow's part to capture the moment in history more vividly. It really made it a lot easier to relate when you see new footage that you remember and can be like "WHOA I REMEMBER THAT!!11!!1!" Then you shit your pants.
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I would definitely recommend this film to almost anyone. I will warn people, though, that there are some graphic torture scenes in the first half hour that may be hard to watch. After that, though, it is much more about following Maya and her search for OBL (well, she's actually looking for Abu Ahmed, but...whatever.)
Writing: 9.5/10
Directing: 9.5/10
Acting: 9.5/10
Pacing: 8.5 /10
Rewatchability: 7/10
Score: 8.8/10
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