Zero Dark 30: Review

Rating: 6/10

Released: January 2013

Certificate: 15

Directors: Kathryn Bigelow

Genre: Action/Drama/History

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton and Chris Pratt

Summary: Jessica Chastain a CIA operative is part of an elite intelligence team that are working across the globe with only one goal in mind: To find Osama Bin Laden and eliminate him. The film itself is based on true events that occurred during the actual mission that took place at Osama Bin Laden’s Pakistan compound on the 2^nd May 2011 in which he was killed.

Image: Maya.

Zero Dark 30 reunites the Oscar winning team of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal who produced the stunning and nerve shredding “Hurtlocker”. Their combined high level attributes can once again been seen within Zero Dark 30 with scenes of inhumane torture and such realism which contributes to the story of one of history’s greatest manhunts for one the world’s most dangerous men.

The films lead character is a red-head called Maya (Jessica Chastain) who is a CIA operative, who looks very fragile because of her pale skin and her lean body however she does not have a personality to match this as she is a very persuasive and argumentative female who usually gets her way.  Maya first starts tracking Bin Laden just after 9/11 a date in which is painfully engraved on every Americans heart. At the start she walks in on a torture in Pakistan and finds it very unpleasant shown by the fact she is reluctant to get involved. The film’s director Kathryn Bigelow was actually critsised by the CIA for suggesting that information about Bin Laden was gained through torture. The scenes of torture are followed by excessive government intelligence research which put a bit a of a dampener on the film as this carried on for too long and I began to lose interest at this point. Though after the extensive research scenes the Navy Seal mission to locate and kill Bin Laden is filmed in stunning high quality and lifts the level of the film. The film itself mainly airs the apparent darkness of the US hunt for Bin Laden this can play on the audiences mind as to whether certain measures are moral.

Image: Navy Seals getting ready to attack a compound.

My only criticisms of the film are that at the beginning the extensive research scenes were overly prolonged, it crammed too much in and the film itself had traits of a documentary style genre.

I would definitely recommend the film for those who are interested in this genre but would say it’s not for the faint hearted and that the introduction ruined the film in my eyes – hence the low rating.