Zero Dark Thirty- Movie Reviews

Critic's Rating:

4/5

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Mark Strong

Direction: Kathryn Bigelow

Genre: Drama

Duration: 2 hours 40 minutes

Story: How one CIA agent tracked down Osama bin Laden and ended the largest manhunt in US history.

Review: When you first meet Maya (Chastain), she's a recruit fresh off the plane from Washington, stepping into one of the CIA's Black Sites where detainees are being interrogated (read: tortured) to give up the location of al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden. Her fellow officer Dan (Clarke) is persuasive and experienced enough to make the tough calls and wonders if Maya has what it takes. He needn't have worried.

By the time the Bush administration gives way to Obama's and Dan returns to Washington, she is doggedly pursuing any and every lead that can bring her closer to her target. Personal losses, two attacks on her life notwithstanding, she single-mindedly trudges on and on till the very end.

Jessica Chastain deserves to win every award she's nominated for this year. That's how good her performance in the film is. The supporting actors impress as well, and that's rare to see. Backed by a winning script by Mark Boal (who also wrote Bigelow's The Hurt Locker), Chastain strides through in a splendid role. Kathryn is the film's other star. Beginning the film in the dark with voices amplifying the terror that was 9/11, she matter-of-factly tells her story, in chapters which might just as well have been a visual dossier of the bin Laden killing, but is elevated by the human element.

However, overindulgence is what truly mars the effort. The film could've been much shorter. Clocking in at close to three hours, the film's premise is based on a series of events that spanned close to a decade, but the suspense is built, almost in real time, on slow-burn. It gives you the feeling of being there 'as it happens'. That's not always something your audience wants.

Note: You will not like this movie if scenes of torture and foul language disturb you.

Resource:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/movie-reviews/english/Zero-Dark-Thirty/movie-review/18499583.cms

Zero Dark Thirty- Movie Previews

Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Edgar Ramirez
Screenplay: Mark Boal
Producer: Colin Wilson, Ted Schipper, and Greg Shapiro
Indian Release Date: January 11, 2013

Synopsis

The hunt for Osama bin Laden preoccupied the world and two American presidential administrations for more than a decade. But in the end, it took a small, dedicated team of CIA operatives to track him down. Every aspect of their mission was shrouded in secrecy. Though some of the details have since been made public, many of the most significant parts of the intelligence operation--including the central role played by that team--are brought to the screen for the first time in a nuanced and gripping new film by the Oscar winning creative duo ofKathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal.

Their account of bin Laden's pursuit and capture, vivid yet faithful to the facts, takes the viewer inside the hubs of power and to the front lines of this historic mission, culminating in the special operations assault on a mysterious, suburban Pakistani compound.

But it is the lead-up to the raid that truly distinguishes Zero Dark Thirty from other accounts. The quest to find bin Laden was fraught with danger from the start, and not every U.S. operative survived. Some intelligence experts came to believe that the assignment was impossible to carry out, but on the ground a determined team of analysts and interrogators defied the odds and proved them wrong. For the first time, their struggle to find Osama bin Laden is told on the screen in electrifying detail.

Resource:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/previews/hollywood/Zero-Dark-Thirty/articleshow/17465806.cms