Zero Dark Thirty

Four out of Four Stars

On May 2^nd, 2011, President Obama and the CIA confirmed that Osama bin Laden was successfully terminated during Operation Geronimo, the raid orchestrated by Seal Team Six.  The CIA’s ceaseless attempts at tracking down Bin Laden and the raid on his Abbottabad compound is captured by Kathryn Bigelow in her latest film, Zero Dark Thirty. Based on the research conducted by screenwriter/journalist, Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty follows Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA operative and her decade long search for the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

 Despite the recent controversy the film has received by Senator John McCain and others over the dramatization of CIA’s use of torture to obtain information, it is necessary to see both sides of the ethical coin. As Neil Gaiman once wrote, “There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right.” The names of those involved in capturing Bin Laden are changed to protect their anonymity, despite the recent succession of books and first-hand accounts of Operation Geronimo.

Zero Dark Thirty is a film set in three acts: the CIA’s actions after 9/11, Maya’s obsession into tracking down Bin Laden despite the shadow of doubt by her superiors, and the raid on Bin Laden’s compound. Boal’s script and Bigelow’s vérité-styled camera leave you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. Bigelow and Boal collaborated together on The Hurt Locker four years earlier by focusing on man’s obsession with war. In Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow and Boal show war through the eyes of those behind the desk and on the front lines.

Jessica Chastain’s performance as Maya is astonishing as she gives a voice to the unknown operative involved in taking down Bin Laden. In the past two years, Chastain has delivered a succession of outstanding performances; from the lovable Celia Foote in The Help to the ethereal mother in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Her performance in Zero Dark Thirty is intense and bold as it matches up with Jodie Foster’s performance in The Silence of the Lambs; it is, by far, the best performance of the year.

Zero Dark Thirty is not a guts-for-glory film like Rambo, or an anti-war tissue-grabber like Platoon; it is a neutral, yet suspenseful, view of global terrorism. The last thirty minutes of the film leaves you glued to the screen, but it’s the close-up on Chastain’s face that symbolizes the weariness of war and the uncertainty over the end of the War on Terror.