2012
Formats
Movie theater.
Premise
Jessica Chastain stars as a CIA operative in her decade long manhunt for Osama bin Laden.
Loved
Chastain, the last act, Mark Strong.
Liked
Pretty much everything else.
Thoughts
Overall a strong film with some great, intense moments.
Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) was my undisputed frontrunner for best actress, but now it's a two-women race thanks to Chastain's mesmerizing performance. I could not take my eyes off her, as she personified the razor thin line between determination and obsession.
The rest of the cast was mostly unknown to me, which greatly helped with the realism and intensity of the story. But seriously, can we give some love to Mark Strong? Most know him from the first Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes flick. I enjoyed him in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but in here, he stomped into just one scene, killed it, dropped the mic, and stomped out.
Director Kathryn Bigelow did a great job of making 157 minutes of research and dead ends feel less than two hours long. For the most part, it was easy to follow the paperwork and politics. All the while, you believed the characters were in constant danger, with death coming at any given moment, but somehow never feeling like cheap "gotcha" moments.
Aside from Chastain, two other sections were truly haunting. First was the chilling open, reminding the audience of the horror of 9/11 without gratuitous visuals. But the even bigger feat was the incredible piece of edge-of-your-seat suspense that was the last act, in which I was transported to Abbottabad, Pakistan with Seal Team 6. The cliche "you can hear a pin drop" absolutely applied to these unforgettable moments. While we were informed there were no American casualties during the raid, the film showed it in a very matter of fact way, including the mistakes and unexpected obstacles. As involving as it was to be in the scene, it was also a marvel to see brave soldiers doing work as a highly-trained, fluid team.
If I had to nitpick, it would be the CIA scenes in the first act. I didn't know which characters to follow, who the leads were, or what was going on. Perhaps that was intentional to show how lost the team was in trying to find bin Laden, but it just came off as confusing.
As for the torture controversy? I don't have much to say. I never felt like the movie had an agenda. But laid it out as is. It did not sugarcoat the painful and demeaning damage done to humans. But it also didn't get on its soapbox about it either. Frankly, the torture issue felt overblown in context of the film as a whole.
I'm always hesitant to judge a movie about an event that hasn't gone through the test of time. But Zero Dark Thirty made a very strong case as one of 2012's best, thanks to Chastain's hypnotic performance and practically flawless filmmaking in the last third. Only time will tell if this title will still resonate as it intended to, years from now. For now, I'll stick to my guns and consider The Hurt Locker to be Bigelow's masterpiece.
