Film Review of Zero Dark Thirty
by Laura Albert & Philippe Arbeit
You are sitting in a restaurant, a bus, lost in the dull cotton wool
of the day until a bomb blast changes everything. If you grew up in a
volatile household, sudden violence is not a surprise — you are wired
for it, perhaps. Living in places where anything can and does happen
might feel like home.
Zero Dark Thirty starts with a live tape of the 9/11 mayhem and ends
with the loneliness of a CIA agent who has just finished her mission:
the elimination of Bin Laden. No spoiler, we already know how it ends,
but the journey is breathtaking.
Argo, using information that was only recently declassified, depicted
a CIA mission that happened thirty years ago; Zero Dark
Thirty narrates history that is still allegedly secret. How director
Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal got their information has already
generated controversy and started a US Senate investigation. But none
of that bad publicity will hurt this film — it is an action-packed
thriller that keeps you on edge throughout.
Maya, played by the superb Jessica Chastain, is the main force in the
hunt for Bin Laden. In the first scenes she is confronted with with a
prisoner being tortured and shown to be somewhat squeamish about these
methods — maybe on the fence regarding the use of waterboarding and
other forms of torture. But any hesitations are cast aside quickly as
she grows into a driven and fearless agent, totally dedicated to her
goal of hunting Terrorists with a capital T. At one point she
expresses sympathy for the CIA chief in Pakistan, who is forced to
leave the country due to his involvement in drone attacks; if Maya
feels anything for the innocent victims who might have been killed, it
is not expressed. She is Rambo seeking revenge, her transformation
into warrior is complete.
She is a woman working in essentially a man
