Zero Dark Thirty is a suspenseful military thriller made by the award-winning writer/director pair behind The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow (director and ex wife of director James Cameron) and Mark Boal (writer) .The story is told by first-hand accounts on the real life situation of the Osama Bin Laden murder, and Bigelow and Boal do a fantastic job managing to pull it off well.
The film follows Jessica Chastain’s (The Help, Lawless) character, a CIA intelligence expert named Maya, who is on a hunt to find Bin Laden through risky leads and very intense rage. Moviegoers will get a pleasant surprise by this. If you were expecting a movie only about Navy Seal Team 6 busting through Bin Laden’s door to the sound of helicopters and very heroic music, you would be wrong.
However, Zero Dark Thirty follows a search for Bin Laden, displaying the torture and questioning that the US used before it was outlawed. The main basis of the plot is the decade that followed the Sept. 11 attacks on the US with Chastain’s character following hopeless leads and losing friends in a CSI: Islamabad style investigator persona.
Good things? A lot. ZDT has a dark story and follows interesting characters. Chastain’s character, Maya, shows off her intelligence and ambitious attitude in interesting ways. It’s written so that you can really feel the weight of the decisions that the characters have to make, just like in The Hurt Locker. And like The Hurt Locker, the characters are cast well and the actors do a great job at their respective roles.
What’s bad about it? Not much, but here’s some fault-finding. Many times during the film, I detected the stench of politics coming into the mix. However, it was written well and didn’t push any views on anyone, it only further developed the story in the same way it did in real life. Also, the plot slowed down for a long time after the beginning development. This would be okay because it redeems itself later, but the anticipation made the slow part of the movie watchable.
The fans of action won’t be missing anything, since there are occasional explosions and gunfire that is very, very loud. The highly awaited storming of Osama Bin Laden’s house is at the end, and finally experiencing it is an amazing change of pace and a great finale to the already suspenseful film!
Overall, I would give this movie a 4.5/5