Initially when the movie was over I said that I liked
it. And overall I guess I still do. But the more I thought about it and the more I
discussed it with others a lot of flaws started to appear. “The greatest manhunt in history” turned out to
be kind of less interesting than I thought it would be.
Let’s start with Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life) who plays Maya.
I thought she was good until she has an outburst with her boss and
suddenly everything Chastain was doing seemed very contrived. This is an extremely pouty performance and I
was fed up with this character about half way through. And this has nothing to do with Maya being a
strong female. I’m all for that but why
the fuck is she acting like a child? This
person is supposed to be a fairly high ranked CIA operative which means she’s
gonna follow the chain of command. She’s
not gonna throw a tantrum or write on her boss’s door every day the number of
days of inactivity it’s been since bin Laden’s compound was found. Be a fucking professional lady. And the part at the end where she cries was
really forced. As it was pointed out to
me, if this character had been a man they sure as shit wouldn’t have had him
cry at the conclusion of this operation.
All we know about Maya is that she’s tenacious and has to have her
way. She wants to find and kill bin
Laden and that’s it. We don’t know
anything else about her except for the inadvertently comedic line where she
mentions that she was recruited by the CIA out of high school (I don’t care if
the CIA really does do that, it just sounds stupid). Now that I think about it this fact could
explain her unprofessional behavior. My
point is this protagonist is pretty one dimensional and that was disappointing.
What was also disappointing was the manhunt itself, which is
most of the movie. I think they started
too far back in time. I totally understand
that 9/11 needs to be in there because, after all, this is the reason why we
wanted bin Laden’s head on a platter. But
I think you could start the story with discovering the compound or possibly
with the courier stuff. Everything else
before that could’ve been summed up either in text or narration before the film
beings proper. If you want to show some torture,
I get it, go for it. But there is just a
lot of very little going on until the compound is found. However, I could see an argument being made
that the length of the movie mimics the length of the manhunt and how long and
difficult it was to find bin Laden. That’s
a fair point.
The raid on the compound was excellent though and by far the
best part of the movie. I love how it
was cut and dry with no music or very fancy camera work. It felt more like a documentary at that
point, like Kathryn Bigelow had somehow gone back in time and sent a camera
crew with Seal Team 6 on their mission. And
even though I knew how it was all going to play out the adrenaline was pumping
and I couldn’t wait to see what was around the next corner. It was such a smart choice to have the death
of bin Laden be relatively uneventful too.
The Seals kill a bunch of dudes and then one of them over the radio says
they may have him but they’re not totally certain. There’s no slow-mo shot or musical cue or
anything. Beautifully done.
I have to admit that the raid is a damn good payoff. But at the same time it should’ve been the
second half of the film. I mean I was
really let down that we don’t get to know Seal Team 6. I still cared about them and didn’t want to
see them get hurt regardless but we’re not told a single thing about them
here. I was expecting a montage of these
dudes getting handpicked for the job after doing some impressive Seal type
shit.
And that may sound too much like an action movie cliché but
it became clear after a little while that this wasn’t some lofty, formula free,
extremely realistic flick. That’s what I
thought it was supposed to be with all of this talk about the filmmakers
working with the CIA and getting access to privileged information ‘n shit. Turns out the director of the CIA said that
this thing took significant artistic license and that it’s “not a realistic portrayal
of the facts”. So here’s my beef, Bigelow
and co. dramatized and made shit up but still crafted a picture that’s mostly
kinda boring. And the original script
was written before we found and killed bin Laden. The raid was added after the fact. Goddamn, we would’ve gotten such a dull movie
if it was just about the manhunt and there was no raid finale.
Before I checked this out I was surprised, like the rest of
the world, when Bigelow wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for best director this
year. And even though I think the
Academy Awards are all bullshit and politics anyway, I can see why they didn’t
give her a nomination. The
cinematography and the production design are great but the script and the lead
actress are not. Some of the dialogue in
particular is really bad and I had a bunch of examples but I can’t remember
them now. Although, it was pretty cool
when that CIA guy yells “bring me people to kill!”
The main problem here is the script. It’s not tight enough and was way more
movie-ish (if you know what I mean) than I was expecting. There are too many unnecessary details and
flat characters. The story focuses too
much on Maya which doesn’t feel right. I
don’t care about her. I want to know
about the team that had to train and execute the raid. It might have been nice to get some
background on bin Laden too ‘cause they don’t tell you shit about him in
this. He’s portrayed purely as a boogeyman
like he was in real life. But I’m not
sure how well that would’ve fit, just thinking out loud. Anyway, it seems like everything leading up
to the compound part wasn’t crazy or unbelievable. That shit unfolded in an uninteresting
way. But how we deciphered that bin
Laden was staying at the compound and the actual revenge part where he gets
shot in the fucking eye was the good shit.
That’s your story.
This ain’t no Hurt
Locker. That was really entertaining
but also really informative. Zero Dark Thirty doles out the info in a
stiff manner which makes it harder to absorb.
But then again, you’re apparently being misinformed anyway. As a movie this isn’t bad but it’s not great
either.
And if you take a step back this is classic Bigelow really. Her films are pretty hit or miss. Since The
Hurt Locker was good she won’t have a good one again for another one or two
movies. I liked Near Dark better than this but they’re similar in that they both
have one incredible segment out of an otherwise, honestly, forgettable picture. Bigelow can definitely make some magic happen;
she’s just not very consistent.
Zero Dark Thirty |
Near Dark |
Zero Dark Thirty: The shitty Homeland.
ReplyDeleteApparently the writers didn't cooperate with the government so that they could have even more artistic license to make America look uncool about torture and other stuff or whatever. Somehow the script still found a way to suck.
Maybe the raid, starring Andy from Parks and Rec, was so awesome because there was no talking and therefore no lines to make stupid and also no Maya. It is proven that movies about raids and only raids are great.