Zero Dark Thirty

First off, this is not a propaganda movie for the US, glorifying their operation to kill Osama bin Laden. It does tell the story, but it also shows the pain felt by both sides and that it wasn't just some clean in and out operation.

The story picks up two years after 9/11, with a young CIA operative (Jessica Chastain) is witnessing her first interrogation of a detainee at the hands of her new colleague Dan (Jason Clarke). Her character, Maya, has just been transferred to the US embassy in Pakistan, tasked with finding information about top al-Qaeda personnel. The detainee that they are interrogating has links to Saudi terrorists. They soon trick him into divulging information about Abu Ahmed, an old acquaintance, who, through information they can piece together from other detainees, is the courier between bin Laden and Abu Farraj al-Libbi, a ranking officer within al-Qaeda.

Many years later, Maya is able to set up a meet with the detained Abu Farraj, only to find that he is hiding the existence of Ahmed, which Maya interprets as Ahmed being a person of extreme interest. Her senior officer at the embassy (Kyle Chandler), believes Maya should focusing on bringing in known terrorists and be trying to find out where the next global attack will be, so that they can protect the homeland.

Over the next couple of years a lot of things happen in Maya's life. She survives a bombing at the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, her friend Dan is reassigned to Washington and her friend and co-worker Jessica is killed in a botched attempt to try and bring in one of bin Laden's inner circle that she had been spearheading. Whilst trying to find any information on Abu Ahmed, Maya comes across an interview with a detainee who says that he personally buried the man they know as Ahmed, his real name being Habib Sayeed, all the way back in 2001. This seems to have defeated Maya, until a junior officer in her office finds information from the Moroccan intelligence community saying that that man that was buried was actually the brother of the courier. His name is Ibrihim Sayeed and they are able to trace his phone number with the help of Dan. Before Maya can go anywhere with this information, she is attacked coming out of her home by insurgents and subsequently sent back to Washington.

Once they find Sayeed, the operatives are able to trace him to a compound in Abbotabad in Pakistan. Through continued surveillance, Maya soon believes that bin Laden himself is residing within the compound. This belief is not shared by her seniors, who deliberate on the risk of sending in a team to take out the occupants. The CIA chief (James Gandolfini) soon decides that sending in a team to the compound would be beneficial, as whoever this mystery man is, it would be a good idea to take him out.

So Maya is sent to Afghanistan, where she is to oversee the mission to the compound. A SEAL team is put together and with the latest in stealth helicopter technology, they fly into Abbotabad to assault the compound. One of the helicopters loses power and crash lands within the walls of the compound. The team goes in and obliterates the three men who are in there, including Osama bin Laden, whose body they take with them. They also take any hard drives and intel that they can get their hands on. Once they are back at base, the team is welcomed with open arms by everyone, whilst Maya is left to contemplate what she is to do with her life now that her goal that she has been working on for a decade is completed.

Katheryn Bigelow has put together a movie that pulls no punches. Whilst it's hard to tell what actually happened in the events leading up to the operation at the end of the movie, most of the events revolve around real bombings and the detaining of real life individuals. The casting of the movie is amazing.  None of the actors have huge star power, so they are believable in the roles that they play. Jessica Chastain is brilliant as Maya and you can really see that following through with this mission means everything to her. Jennifer Ehle is great as Maya's friend Jessica who really wants to show her friend that she wants to do her best on this mission. Mark Strong plays Maya's boss in Washington and really wants to believe that bin Laden is in Pakistan.

I found the torture scenes at the beginning to be confronting, but that is how matters were handled and it is a brutal and honest truth. The water-boarding scenes, in particular, were pretty full on. The mission at the end is shown to be a far from clean mission, resulting in the loss of a state of the art helicopter and civilian casualties that should have been avoided.

The film opens with a black screen where we hear the various radio chatter that happen on 9/11, including one iconic 911 call from one of the towers. The film also has news footage from various attacks throughout the decade, as well as press conferences from both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. These give insight into the world that was happening around the events of the film.

Verdict: Spanning almost a decade, this film shows that the events leading up to the death of Osama bin Laden were not as easy as some might of thought. Although I was not a huge fan of The Hurt Locker, I think Katheryn Bigelow has done a much better job this time around.