Zero Dark Thirty: A Powerful Experience

It's very rare for me to walk out of a film these days and have it leave a profound effect on me. Usually, when I walk out of a film, I'll be like "that was pretty good" or "wow that was great I loved it!" But it's rare for me these days for a film to leave me feeling something. It seems to be happening a lot with the movies I have seen recently, what with Silver Linings Playbook  also eliciting a emotion out of me recently.

Zero Dark Thirty is another one of those films.

Zero Dark Thirty (which takes its name from the military term meaning a non-specific hour where it's either extremely late or early in the morning when it's still dark out) reteams director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal, who first worked together in 2009 on The Hurt Locker.  The film recounts the 10 year manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, the man responsible for one of the worst attacks in American history. We focus on CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) as she embarks on a 10 year mission to track down Bin Laden, a mission which consumes nearly 10 years of her life. Her mission ends in the now famous raid of Bin Laden's compound and his death during the raid.

Now as I said, this film elicited an emotion out of me after watching it, something films rarely do to me anymore. After watching this, I felt....stunned. Stunned at how powerful this film was. It seemed I wasn't the only one: when the credits rolled at the end of my screening, nobody said a word. Everyone left in silence. That's how powerful this was.

The acting in this movie is simply incredible. Jessica Chastain is an absolute powerhouse in this movie. She brilliantly pulls off the range of emotions Maya goes throughout her 10 year mission, from fresh-faced and naive in the beginning to becoming world-weary and hardened by what she has seen, with only one goal on her mind: to track down and kill Bin Laden by whatever means necessary. Chastain easily conveys these emotions well, especially Maya's frustration at not being able to have captured Osama yet. In my Silver Linings Playbook review, I said I would like Jennifer Lawrence to win the Best Actress award. However, if Chastain ends up beating Lawrence and winning the Oscar, I would be entirely fine with that Chastain gives a great performance.

The rest of the supporting cast did a fine job as well. George Clarke, who plays Maya's colleague Dan, did a great job. I have never seen him in anything else before this and I hope to see more of him in future films. Kyle Chandler, who plays Joseph Bradley, Maya's boss, also does a fine job with his role. It was also fun to see the way the Navy SEAL team who took down Osama interact with each other, especially Joel Edgerton and, surprisingly, Chris Pratt, who is well known for starring on NBC's sitcom Parks and Recreation and turns in a surpisingly dramatic performance. He and Edgerton and the rest of the SEALs interact so well with each other, you would think they actually went through a war together.

Also, this film is one hell of an intense ride. This is thanks in part to Bigelow's directing, which once again proves why she's one of the best directors working in Hollywood today. Her direction is excellent, building up scenes with a lot of tension and even making some scenes you would think would not have a lot of tension pretty intense. Also, she does not shy away from some of the waterboarding/torture scenes, which has caused a lot of controversy since it's released. I'll just say this: there were a couple times I flinched in this over how real these scenes were.

And then you have the last 30 minutes of this film. The last 30 minutes of the film depicts the raid on Osama's bunker and are easily some of the most intense moments I've ever seen in a film. The entire time I witnessed this, I was on the edge of my seat. What's cool is during some parts of the raid, Bigelow shoots in night-vision mode, letting us see what the SEALs see through their night-vision goggles. Bigelow makes you feel like you're in the middle of the raid yourself.

The screenplay is also really well done. Mark Boal knows how to make an excellent military movie (see: The Hurt Locker) and he does it again here. The script crackles with intensity and true emotion.  What's interesting to note about the script is that this script was originally not the film Bigelow and Boal were supposed to make. They originally had another movie planned about finding Bin Laden which would end on an uncertain note about whether we would find him or not. But then, we actually got Bin Laden so Bigelow and Boal essentially started from scratch but still kept some elements of the original film in this movie. It never seemed like there was one part from the scrapped film and one from this newer movie clashing together so props to Boal for making it seem smoothless.

I will say that the film is a long one (two and a half hours to be exact) but it seemed to go by pretty quickly actually.

Overall, Zero Dark Thirty was an excellent, well-made film. It's definitely one of my favorites from 2012. I walked out of the theater stunned by the realism I had just witnessed. As I type this, nearly four hours after I drove home from the theater, it still sticks with me. If a film can evoke that kind of a response out of you and can stay with you hours later, then by all means it has succeeded as a film.

Grade: A