Zero Dark Thirty

Katherine Bigelow wants to make war movies that put aside politics and stay close to the facts.  I commend her for being the first director to succeed with a movie about Iraq.  (Although for me In the Valley of Elah was more compelling than Hurt Locker.)  But the newer movie has some deep and glaring problems.

I will be honest and say that I was slightly dreading this one, because of the depiction of torture.  The makers of this movie have stated that they wanted to let viewers make up their own mind about the CIA's detainee system post 9/11, and I believe them.  The fundamental problem is that neutrality on this issue necessarily comes off as silent consent.  The narrative that the film subscribes to is that the information given by tortured detainees led intelligence officials (or one highly devoted official, but we'll get to that later) to focus their efforts on a possible courier to Bin Laden.

Many people have written about why this is inaccurate, and I'm not going to repeat the facts here.  However, even if torture did provide crucial information in this pursuit, the movie does not really offer up a crucial question:  does that information really justify the means of obtaining it?  Perhaps this question is lurking in the background, but if this is really an insider's account, as the text at the beginning claims, than why not have the characters make their opinions known.  (Instead we get one torturer taking a desk job because he feels he's "looked at too many men naked," and later a woman shaking her head slightly when listening to Obama denounce torture in an interview.)

When I actually watched Zero Dark Thirty, I could see that the whole torture issue is just one symptom of a larger problem; this movie doesn't just avoid politics, it avoids any kind of message at all.  So it's reasonable to ask why it even exists.  If Bigelow felt the need to say that behind the raid in Abbottabad were years of painstaking and unrewarded effort by hardworking and incredibly devoted agents, then forgive me for saying that that's not exactly a revelation.  If the movie is meant as a fictional character study of one particularly feisty woman devoted to an incredibly personal manhunt for ten years, then fine, but I think Bigelow fails on this front as well.  Chastain is a fine actress, but the role has little development and the last third of the movie consists of her being right about everything.

Speaking about this last part, Bigelow again dances around an extremely important and currently relevant issue, when the CIA leaders debate on whether to act on so little intelligence.  However, instead of any reasonable justification, they decide to send in the helicopters because Chastain impresses everyone with her confidence.  It's not only irresponsible, it's silly and boring.

By far the best scene of the movie (and this really surprised me) is the obligatory depiction of the raid itself.  It's here that Bigelow's "just-the-facts" approach really pays off.  This scene could easily have been something that high school teachers would show to students ten years from now to show America's clean and cathartic break with the war on terror.  Instead we get the truth, which is a less-than-perfect assault where women got shot for being hysterical, and a dozen children are forced to huddle while men dressed in black point guns at them.  Of course the soldiers are just doing their job, and as such it stands as a chilling reminder of why there is a difference between the police and the military.  It's exactly the sort of thing we should be showing to high school students; it's probably the best depiction of a modern military action.

Edit: Speaking of which, happy Memorial Day! :/