- March 10, 2025
It isn't "for" and it isn't "against" torture. It's a movie about how things happened. It's about closure.
BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR
It would be a mistake to go into the Oscar-nominated “Zero Dark Thirty” looking for messages about morality and torture.
Careful to leave flourishes like preachiness — and even character development, for that matter — at the door, Director Kathryn Bigelow (whose “The Hurt Locker” won Best Picture in 2009) opts instead to focus entirely on story, to make a movie 100% about the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, about intelligence and interrogation and the state of living in a constant lack of all certainty.
And I love that about it.
Following its web of leads can sometimes get a little murky, but for the first two hours of the movie, before bin Laden’s hideout is finally raided, we follow each plot point step by step, from one informant to another. And despite knowing exactly how it all will end, there’s still this great sense of tension and urgency that underlies most every scene.
It’s not a spoiler to say bin Laden dies at the end — obviously -- but throughout the entire 25-minute sequence while Navy SEALs invade his compound, it’s hard not to clench your fists, wonder what’s around that next corner and worry about how all this is really going to play out.
The sequence is exciting, the kind of edge-of-your-seat action scene that isn’t exactly loud or fast-paced but still manages to be thrilling. Now, whether or not a real-life assassination of anyone, even a terrorist, should be this much fun to watch, that’s for you to decide.
But Bigelow doesn’t dress it up with frenetic camera tricks or swelling music. You set the tone. It’s the same matter-of-fact stance she takes in the rest of the film, never answering any questions, just asking them.
It’s with that sense of history observed that one of the SEALs, looking up from bin Laden’s bloody corpse, casually says to the shooter ,”Dude. Do you realize what you just did?”
I sometimes have a problem with movies based off of actual tragedies or huge chapters in history because, without always earning engagement through craft, they have this built-in sense of importance just by virtue of their subject. And to me, that feels a lot like cheating.
But “Zero Dark Thirty” earns its appeal. It’s condenses 10 years of searching into less than three hours of screen time, and it does it in a way that manages to feel almost documentary-like.
It’s unavoidable — especially this soon after these events — that a portion of this film’s power is going to be mined from our memories. But one thing’s for sure: There’s power here.
When those choppers fire up and head out to bin Laden’s hideout, you feel their rattle in your bones. It’s a part of you.
Critical mass
“Zero Dark Thirty” (R, 2 hr 37 minutes)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Released: Jan. 11 (wide)
**** .5 (of five)
“Zero Dark Thirty” will never be as important to viewers as it is right now, and its Oscar nomination is warranted. If you didn’t make it out to opening night, consider this your second chance.
Rotten Tomatoes 93% fresh (of 169 critics)
IMDB 7.6/10 (of 12,343 fans)
Roger Ebert *** (out of four)
Christy Lemire *** .5 (out of four)
