“Can I be honest with you? …I’m bad fucking news… I’m not your friend. I’m not going to help you. I’m going to break you… any questions?”

Zero Dark Thirty has an incredibly focused story, brilliant characters and great acting. Bigelow knows her stuff and delivers a thrilling drama about true events. I really liked how unfiltered this film is, nothing is kept back or not shown for any reason, no side is given good guy privileges or bad guy dramatics, from start to finish it felt real and for that I respect this film greatly. The film has a few controversies behind it but none of them affect the film as it is. The film wasn’t pro Obama, if anything probably against him or the bureaucracy anyway. If you think torture is okay after watching this film I don’t like you (weirdo). How did this not beat Argo at the Oscars?

Plot Sypnosis
Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. For several years, she is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leader, Osama Bin Laden. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. But only Maya is confident Bin Laden is where she says he is.

I really liked how the story focused so tightly on one characters obsession with finding her target. This way of telling this particular story is great because it allows the viewer to see the events from a person who has spent her entire career from high school hunting the most wanted man in the world. Following her you see everything torture, bureaucracy and intelligence gathering in a way that is both entertaining and at times thrilling and disturbing and funny (my mind is everywhere). The acting is great: Jessica Chastain is brilliant and passionate as the professional CIA man hunter Maya. Jason Clarke plays a fantastic character that is very strange to understand, he tortures people but seems like a nice guy the rest of the time, I’d like to think he did just because it was his job and I think that because of the way he transferred.

The drama in this film comes from the sheer amount of passion and drive from Chastain’s Maya who has the most insanely convincing outburst I have seen in a film for a while. The film had thrills all over and uses them well. The scene in the restaurant didn’t see that coming at all! When that informant drives into the compound didn’t see that coming! When the soldier’s raid and kill Bin Ladin well I saw that coming but it was so tense! The style of this film is clean and well-paced strangely consistent through the entire film. The visuals were great with bombs going off all the time and scenery was great in true Bigelow style. My favourite part of the visuals though was the raid, uniforms, equipment and those cool ass helicopters! Crash 50% of the time but look really futuristic. Totally going to be paranoid walking my dog at night.

My favourite scene would have to be the raid on the compound. It was incredibly suspenseful and thrilling to watch. The scenes and execution were very professional with great performances from the actors portraying those soldiers, notably Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton. The raid scene was very harsh as well, it was an execution mission and you very rarely see that portrayed to its disturbing truth.