Zero Dark Thirty Review

By Steven McLain

Spoiler alert: bin Laden dies at the end.  But we all knew that going into the theater.  The really intriguing part of the movie isn't the outcome, but how it was achieved.  Like most things in life, the journey is just as important as the destination.  Especially when that journey comprises the biggest manhunt in human history, and is fraught with moral conundrums and political machinations beyond the movie theater.  The reason for all the fist wrangling is that the film-makers had extraordinary access to CIA agents and information about the manhunt for bin Laden and because the movie depicts aspects of "heightened interrogation techniques" beyond what was officially acknowledged.  Simply put, Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and starring Jessica Chastain, takes a hard look at the methods used to gather intelligence not only about the location of Osama bin Laden, but also forthcoming attacks such as the London and Madrid bombings.  In this respect, the filmmakers make a hard decision about how to portray coercive interrogations--torture. 

As a moral argument, few people would quibble over whether to use torture as a means to extract timely information that might prevent an attack, or save someone's life.  The old story goes something like this: a child has been kidnapped and the kidnapper has been caught, but the child has not been found and the kidnapper refuses to disclose the child's location.  Are law enforcement officers justified in using torture to extract that information and save the child's life? 

Lawmakers and intelligence agencies in the war against terror have contended that torture is a valuable and justifiable method for gathering intelligence that might prevent attacks against American interests.  But is torture justifiable in gathering information about the location of Osama bin Laden?  You could argue (and the movie does in passing) that by catching bin Laden further attacks could be prevented, especially attacks on American soil.  But politicians, and the American public, did quibble over the morality and legality of using torture to gather intelligence that would lead to his capture.  By that point, the war in Iraq had eclipsed the war in Afghanistan, and the hunt for bin Laden had been pushed the back burner.

Jessica Chastain as CIA agent Maya

The movie follows that back-burner effort, spearheaded by Maya's quixotic efforts to find Osama bin Laden.  Except that we know those efforts were far from in vain.  In fact, he was caught, he was killed, and it may have earned President Obama a second term in office.  It galvanized support for the president, and offered a viable excuse for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.  It was a literal nail in the war on terror's coffin. 

Zero Dark Thirty unflinchingly follows efforts to find bin Laden, and looks at the human cost (both to those being brutalized and the brutalizers) of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" and also at the way intelligence activities shifted toward electronic intelligence with the softening support of detainee programs on the homefront.  But the movie offers a look that is neither easy to classify, nor easy dismiss.  The character of Maya, whom the movie follows for much of the action (save the actual raid on the bin Laden compound, itself unsettling in its banality), is acknowledged from the beginning as "a killer."  She does not shirk from using torture, but the cost is plain on her face and we are left with a parting shot of her weeping--but are her tears catharsis or realization that her life is now meaningless, the majority of it devoted to finding and killing Osama bin Laden?

SEALs about to breach the bin Laden compound

Kathryn Bigelow manages to create a movie that is at once decisive and cloying, tempting the audience with answers but never fully revealing them.  Because, ultimately, the movie hopes to accurately represent reality, in which morality is never black and white, and answers are difficult to procure, if you can even stop to ask the right questions.  Are we, in those tears, meant to see ourselves?  Does Maya embody the American obsession with bin Laden?  And now that we took him out, the meaninglessness of our lives?  How do we confront the horrors of that obsession, and the cost we're still reaping in the Middle East?  These aren't easy questions to answer, but the movie declared brilliantly that they are questions we ought seriously to ponder.

Overall, I would recommend this movie to just about everybody.