MOVIE REVIEW: Zero Dark Thirty

The movie has received a lot of attention lately from members of the U.S. Congress. Some senators are questioning the historical accuracy of the use of torture, which opens the movie, in finding Usama bin Laden. The producers of the show has however stood their ground on the issue and has insisted that the movie is not a "documentary." Such incident will only fuel interest in the movie and could help it attract more moviegoers. Some sort of a talking point will always serve the dollar making potential of any movie.

Anyway, going to the movie, the opening was quite slow and dragging for me. The torture scenes were, well, tortuous to watch. It lacked urgency, terror (pun intended), and fear. The camera angles were weak such that the emotional aspect of the scenes were not quite communicated to the audience. The rest of the movie rambles upon scenes of the process of finding people linked to bin Laden with interposing of the different bombings incidents that happened after 9-11 like the London Bus bombings, the Marriott Hotel bombing in Pakistan among others.

I'm not quite blown away by the movie, for a long movie, running at two hours and thirty-six minutes, the excitement that is supposed to be present and the anticipation gripping the audience at the thought that the most infamous terrorist the world has probably ever seen is about to be found was absent. The movie could not present a sense of WOOH. Indeed, even the scene were the special ops guys comb through the compound was lacking that combat excitement. For a movie that claims not to be a documentary, it sure looked like one. In fact, I have seen more exciting documentaries!

However, the one redeeming part of the movie was the last scene. In it, Maya, the female protagonist, is transported off to some location, presumably to return to the U.S., alone in a giant C-130 Hercules transport plane. It somehow symbolizes her importance in the finding of bin Laden and she knows that she did a good job. Her importance could not be more represented by the fact that she was travelling alone in a big plane, as big as her contributions were to the final termination of a brutal terrorist.

And I always wondered why the movie was titled "Zero Dark Thirty", Maya answered it for me in a scene were she looks at the clock at 00:30 as the troops land in bin Laden's compound in the now famous Abbotabad, Pakistan.