Best Picture #5: ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012)

I’ve been grappling with Zero Dark Thirty for about a week now, trying to figure out just what about it doesn’t seem right. That it is a very good thriller I am sure, but its status as a good film remains questionable.

Like many films that deal with the general topic of terrorism surrounding 9/11 and Al Qaida, Zero Dark Thirty is not about what many people seem to want it to be about.  It's not a screed on torture and its effectiveness, though its early scenes do portray the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" brutally and unflinchingly.  It's not a criticism of the CIA's inability to catch Osama bin Laden for twelve years, although its lead character does face frustrating roadblocks from her superiors when it comes to following her leads.  And it's not a rah-rah flag-waving celebration of Seal Team Six's brave effort in going into the Abbottabad compound late one night, although the final act does depict their raid in detail.

Rather, Zero Dark Thirty is a play-by-play portrayal of the hunt for bin Laden, a walk-through of every step in the logical puzzle, from a detained low-level Al Qaida operative all the way up to bin Laden himself.

And that’s the film’s major problem. True, it doesn’t purport to be anything other than a straightforward account of what is essentially the party line story of the bin Laden hunt. I’m the first to decry critics who try to shape a movie to their own preconceived notions, but Zero Dark Thirty is maddeningly nonpartisan when it comes to dealing with issues that are immediately politically charged as soon as they’re shown. It wouldn’t have killed the movie to have a point of view.

The movie’s shortfall may be due to the recency of the events it portrays. Director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were developing a movie about the hunt for bin Laden long before he was found and killed; therefore the movie was pretty much reshaped from the bottom up after May 2011, and had to be rewritten on its feet as facts became clear. There was no time for history to judge the events, no time to reflect or ruminate, no time to theorize or analyze or examine the causes or ramifications of America’s quest to find its most wanted killer. Only time to report. And that’s all that Zero Dark Thirty does, albeit very well.

The movie opens with jarring audio footage of the 9/11 attacks, which sets the singular purpose of the characters in the film in motion: get bin Laden. We then go to Afghanistan, where CIA operative "Dan" (Jason Clarke) is interrogating a low-level al Qaida operative (Reda Kateb). At his side is the agent we know only as "Maya" (Jessica Chastain), who will be the movie’s crusader to pin bin Laden down, through every obstacle put in her way.

The torture in the film’s first sequence, including a graphic waterboarding, is depicted plainly, with unflinching brutality. What’s more horrific is that Dan and Maya succeed, and convince the prisoner to give them the information they need. This is the most thought-provoking sequence in the movie, as it reframes the torture debate as not a tactical question but a moral one. The debate has casually morphed into a question of “Does it work?” instead of “Is it right?” In order to convince those who have trouble sympathizing with “enemy combatants,” we’re told not that torture is a crime against humanity, but that it is messy and ineffective. The torture in this film is not messy; rather, it’s meticulously planned and carefully dispensed for maximum effect. A jarring revelation is that Dan  is not a thug, but a psychologist. This is not a barbaric method instituted crudely, but a pointed and organized tactic using horrifically cruel means.

Beyond that, the movie takes no particular position on the torture. It's left up in the air whether or not the necessary information could have been gathered by other means (one plot detail at the halfway mark seems to suggest that it could have). The movie merely acknowledges that enhanced interrogation took place, and that its perpetrators were willing to commit such acts in order to achieve their singular goal of finding bin Laden.

Zero Dark Thirty is at its best when it shows us the inner workings of the hunt: the varying tactics, the obstacles, the dead ends. The movie's details are captivating. A sequence involving the tracking of a man who appears to be bin Laden's courier is gripping.

The actors are all adept at bringing subtle humanity to characters who are tasked with leaving their emotions behind. Chastain's role is not particularly difficult, and far short of the complex and fascinating work she brought to The Help and The Tree of Life. Still, she invests the steadfast Maya with a certain frailty that enhances her dedication: the bin Laden hunt is all she's ever done in her professional career, and all she knows how to concern herself with. (This subtext is made whoppingly clear in the movie's clumsy final shot, which is completely unnecessary and condescending.)

Kyle Chandler is equally good as Maya's boss, who seems to be a bureaucrat but is just as dedicated as she is.  Mark Strong is memorable as another CIA high-up.  Clarke hits the right note as his paradoxical character, who is a brutal torturer one minute, but revealed to be a regular guy. His memorable line upon quitting his job, "I've seen one too many guys naked," has been debated by liberals as evidence of the movie's cavalier attitude toward torture, but is actually a revealing glimpse into the male torturer's fear of femininity and resistance to his own qualms about what he's doing.

The least captivating part of the film is the raid itself, when the Navy Seals (including Joel Edgerton and "Parks and Recreation's" Chris Pratt) burst into the Abbottabad compound and take out bin Laden, which is much less interesting than the puzzle that got them there in the first place.  We know that Bigelow and Boal had planned not to have to include this scene at all, but since no one will accept a bin Laden movie without it (like Lincoln without the theater scene), it's been tacked on.  The raid sequence suffers from the general documentary limits of the rest of the film: it's very well shot, well acted and believable, but has little of substance to say about what happened on that night.  Even the danger the Seals are thrown into is understated; there's very little suspense.

Zero Dark Thirty is foremost a thriller, interested more in depicting a suspenseful story than in making a statement.  The argument could be made that it doesn't need to take sides, but with its depiction of such politically polarizing issues as torture, not to mention the general risky moral ground the CIA finds itself on these days, it would be nice if it had something to say about it all.  Zero Dark Thirty is interested in the mechanics of the operation without giving much thought to the big picture.  I can still recommend it as a good suspense film, but that's about it.

*** out of ****