Zero Dark Thirty Review

An edited version of this article first appeared on January 19th 2013 in page 26 of  Saturday Nation

Barely a year and a half after the capture and killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a movie depicting the decade long mission to capture him has caused uproar from different factions of the American government, anti-government groups and human rights activists.

The movie,  Dark Zero Thirty directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, follows the journey of a CIA team that dedicated years to following every little detail and clue that could lead to a possible capture of the world’s most wanted and feared villain.

The movie’s plot commences in 2003 when C.I.A officer Maya (Jessica Chastain) is sent to the American embassy in Pakistan to work with a fellow agent Dan (Jason Clarke). The two spend the first few months trying to get information from Ammar, a detained terrorist. Dan, a cold ruthless man who prefers monkeys to people as friends, uses torture and humiliation to get information from Ammar who despite his suffering remains quiet. Eventually they trick him to giving up the name of Abu Ahmed; an alias used by an old acquaintance of Bin Laden’s who was now working as his personal courier.

Dan is reassigned and Maya fixates the next few years of her life on the single task of finding Abu Ahmed. In the process, she survives several blasts and an attack by gun men. Furthermore, she loses numerous friends and colleagues through a suicide bombing. In 2009, a detainee claims that the man identified as Abu Ahmed from a photograph they have is a man he personally buried in 2001. Maya’s seniors conclude that Abu Ahmed is long dead and they’ve wasted years following a dead trail.

Maya remains adamant and some information from Moroccan intelligence leads her on a new theory that Abu Ahmed was actually alive and the photograph they had  been using was that of Abu Ahmed’s brother who had a striking resemblance to him. With the help of Dan who is now in back at the C.I.A headquarters, they are able to locate Abu Ahmed who eventually leads them to Osama’s compound and consequently to the raid and killing of the man with a 25 million dollar bounty on his head on 2^nd may 2011.

The raid scene

Dark Zero Thirty which was released worldwide on 11^th January had to postpone its release scheduled for October last year until after the American elections. This was due to claims that it would serve as a propaganda tool for the Obama campaign team, to who the killing of Bin Laden was a big selling point. The title, Dark zero thirty, is a military term for 30 minutes after midnight. Director Kathryn Bigelow adds that the title is also symbolic to the darkness and secrecy that cloaked the entire decade long mission.

The movie has been a commercial success beating star studded Gangster Squad in ticket sales when they both premiered last weekend. So far, it has raised over $29.5 million as of last weekend and has bugged five Oscar nominations. Most critics have reviewed the movie well with movie review website rotten Tomatoes describing it as “gripping, suspenseful, and brilliantly crafted” and goes on to say “ Zero Dark Thirty dramatizes the hunt for Osama bin Laden with intelligence and an eye for detail.”

However, not everyone gave the movie a good rating. The film has enraged factions of the American people including senators led by John McCain claiming the movie’s producers were given access to classified information by the C.I.A and Obama administration; a claim that the American government has denied.  This forced the acting C.I.A Director to issue a message which in part read “What I want you to know is that Zero Dark Thirty is a dramatization, not a realistic portrayal of the facts.  CIA interacted with the filmmakers through our Office of Public Affairs but, as is true with any entertainment project with which we interact, we do not control the final product.”

The movies off camera drama did not end there. There have been further claims that the movie is pro-torture and that it wrongfully portrays the use of torture as a key tool that was used to acquire information that led to Bin Laden’s capture. 

And it’s not without good cause. The first hour of the two and a half hour long film contains gory, brutal scenes of prisoners being tortured and humiliated. At best, a prisoner is punched around and at worst they are water boarded, stripped, locked in tiny boxes, denied sleep and made to crawl around naked with a dog leash around their neck. Author Greg Mitchell wrote that "the film’s depiction of torture helping to get bin Laden is muddled at best—but the overall impression by the end, for most viewers, probably will be: Yes, torture played a key (if not the key) role."

Author Greg Mitchell

Other critics had less than flattering remarks about the movie. Journalist Michael Wolff slammed the movie as a "nasty piece of pulp and propaganda" and Bigelow as a "fetishist and sadist" for distorting history with a pro-torture viewpoint.