Zero Dark Thirty Review

From humble beginnings

Full spoiler-free review by Isaac Handelman

Zero Dark Thirty is not a war movie. It’s definitely not an action movie. It’s a military 
thriller for about twenty minutes, and a well-written, tense political drama for an hour. That leaves about half the movie -- an hour and twenty-minutes if anyone’s counting -- to be something else. What, exactly? Well, the most accurate descriptor I can sum up would be a globe-trotting, talk-heavy bore. 

Now, I relay this not to be unnecessarily harsh, nor to criticize Zero Dark Thirty’s lack of action when it’s not aiming to be action-heavy in the first place, but the fact of the matter is, a huge chunk of Zero Dark Thirty just isn’t very interesting. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for dialogue-heavy dramas, so long as they are well acted, dramatic, and sharply written. On one of these fronts, Zero Dark Thirty emerges victorious: Jessica Chastain’s lead performance isn’t going to win any Oscars (in fact, I’m somewhat baffled she was nominated) but it’s solid nonetheless. A more prominent issue is that her character is never endeared to the extent that I felt for her decade-long quest on a personal level. None of the other characters get enough time in the spotlight to truly shine, but no single actor or actress stands out as subpar. On one front I can say that Zero Dark Thirty fails: it’s got a lot of talk and a couple of cringe-worthy terrorist interrogations, and yet the film’s first half isn’t compelling from a narrative standpoint. Which brings me to the final front: is Zero Dark Thirty sharply written? Well, I can honestly say I do not know, because I quite simply didn’t understand most of the CIA jargon being thrown my way. Despite the film’s numerous attempts at keeping me up to date on each new development on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, I found my own comprehension of much of the dialogue completely lost in the shuffle to make Jessica Chastain sound really smart.

Speaking of Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty’s narrative is planted firmly on her as Maya, a young CIA operative who sees the bin Laden case through from start to finish. And when I say start to finish, I mean it; ZDT takes place over the course of almost ten years: from September 11, 2001 until May 1, 2011 (the day of bin Laden’s death). The film’s narrative tracks the bin Laden hunt, down to the most minute detail, from its humble beginnings in torturing captured terrorists for information to the fateful Navy SEAL Operation. The major problem here is how intent director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal seem on conforming to exactly what happened, because large portions of the true story involve nothing more than seemingly endless chunks of the aforementioned CIA-jargon fests and tiny Pakistani town name-dropping; from a cinematic standpoint, it all comes off as just menial exposition.

It seems the film would have benefitted in multiple ways, not only from not abiding so rigidly to each and every truth of the story, but also from drastically reducing the volume of content it covers. I would’ve been perfectly content if the film were to simply trace the operation that brought down bin Laden, from the time of the discovery of his hideout to the training of the Navy SEALS and their ultimate victory. In fact, another major qualm I must bring up is the extreme lack of characterization of the SEALS. Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton make for a likable duo of unlikely heroes -- and yet they are limited to about thirty minutes of screentime and maybe ten lines each. I wanted to get a feel for the SEALS and the gravity of the task being asked of them. I wanted to relate to them and care about them, even though I knew going in that none of them would be injured or killed.

But perhaps I’m sounding too harsh, because there were things about Zero Dark Thirty that I did enjoy: namely, its second half. From the point of the discovery of bin Laden’s encampment and on, the film suddenly becomes interesting and entertaining in the vain that it should have been holistically. ZDT’s climax is just as intense as you’d expect it to be, and the fact that it retains any sort of suspense is an achievement that the film deserves to be commended for considering almost every viewer of the film is privy to its outcome going in. Even the finale isn’t as pristine as it could be, however; it’s again bogged down by an annoyingly stoic dedication to reality, whether that bodes positively or negatively for the overarching cinematic experience.

Bigelow’s directory style retains the hard-boiled grittiness of The Hurt Locker for the scenes that allow it, and she handles scenes of exposition well, though not even her steady hand can make the film’s slowest portions the least bit entertaining. Some of her obsessive-compulsive dedication to realism does pay off, namely in the way way she depicts scenes involving jump-inducing explosions. Each of these jarrings moments is handled marvelously and without mercy, and they allow Bigelow to show off the trademark rawness that earned her so much acclaim for The Hurt Locker. 

A good movie should make me forget about the outside world, but for most of ZDT’s first half, I was more focused on my own thirst than the events onscreen. I should be swept away in the world of the film. Thirty’s second half is better: it turns into an intriguing but still imperfect drama/thriller that isn’t allowed the necessary time to germinate because of the obtuse, exposition-filled first half. The balance turns up with unsurprisingly mixed results. The film takes multiple stabs at redemption, many of which are commendable in their own rights, but its glaring flaws shine bright. Zero Dark Thirty’s marketing campaign contains the bold claim that it chronicles the greatest manhunt in history. The film itself doesn’t offer much evidence for why that’s the case.

Final Score:

5.5/10

“Average”