Directed by:
Kathryn BigelowScreenplay:
Mark BoalCinematography:
Greig FraserComposer:
Alexandre DesplatCast:
Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Edgar Ramirez, James Gandolfini, Chris Pratt, Callan Mulvey (more)VOD (1)
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The hunt for Osama bin Laden preoccupied the world and two American presidential administrations for more than a decade. But in the end, it took a small, dedicated team of CIA operatives to track him down. Every aspect of their mission was shrouded in secrecy. Though some of the details have since been made public, many of the most significant parts of the intelligence operation - including the central role played by that team - are brought to the screen for the first time in this nuanced and gripping film by the Oscar®-winning creative duo of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal. (Icon Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (17)
It doesn’t have the balls of The Hurt Locker, but it’s much more interesting. Immediately having left the nest, Maya the Honey Bee is entrusted with the job to find the bearded villain who knocked down the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Maya was looked for him, grumbling that she’s lacks the means, then she found him and sent a team to take him out. A tear was shed. The End. I hope I haven’t spoiled the ending for you with this SPOILER that they got Bin Laden. :) Jessica Chastain was the energetic powerhouse of the entire movie, even with her one-dimensional character who lives for work alone, and she continues on and up in her career development. As for the other members of the actors’ ensemble, the awesome Jason Clarke is No. 1 in this picture, winning over the audience with his interrogation at the beginning. Mark Strong rocks again, his entry is one of the most memorable scenes of the movie. Kathryn Bigelow managed everything she had to, but as a whole it’s too long and spends a long time beating about the bush. I know that this was how it really happened, but it harms the story. Otherwise decent work, nothing more. It's cool, that you're strong and I respect it, I do. But in the end, everybody breaks, bro. It's biology.
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I understand that getting Osama was mostly due to lengthy bureaucracy combined with refreshing waterboarding, but the first hour of this film is the pure essence of boredom. It only begins to pick up after the attack on the base in Afghanistan, only to culminate in the final bit of action, which is something so precisely and coldly filmed that the director's craft is bewildering; anyway, we won't know for a few years whether this film came too soon or too late. 3 ½.
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I have a minor issue with Kathryn Bigelow in this movie; in comparison to the genius Hurt Locker, it’s the complete oppositemovie-wise. While The Hurt Locker was pure action with barely any story, Zero Dark Thirty is mostly a story that completely overshadows everything else. It attempts to be such a precisely told Bin Ladin operation that it sometimes forgets that it’s a movie and not a book. That’s exactly why the movie is 157 minutes long and why there’s a couple of moments that were incredibly boring to me. If it weren’t for the last half an hour, I’d be pretty pissed. Luckily, Jessica Chastain was keeping everything on such a strong level that I couldn’t close my eyes throughout the movie; it’d simply be too much of a shame.
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The losers have a voice and dignity (which we realize when they are completely denied and the film does not turn “eyes"), the winners are not here - only strange marked beings without intimacy and pleasure, lonely technocrats who approve to any sort of crap, but it breaks them down when someone shoots their favorite monkeys. One of the American critics wrote that this procedural view of "the administration of justice" is amoral and came, like Greengrass' Flight 93, too soon. I say: just in time. Maybe one day we will see a film where everything will be given with clear moral values, the good will be good and the bad will be bad. This will be the story of the winners. Zero Dark Thirty is a story of lost and abandoned people, which can be interpreted as admiration for the performance of the bureaucratic machinery of the secret services, but rather offers the interpretation that Bigelow has made another bold film about stigmatized individuals who "move history".
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"The ultra-professional result may be easier to respect than enjoy," said Peter Debruge in his review for “Variety” and I couldn’t agree more. The process that lead to the discovery of the hideout of Osama bin Laden and his killing is very well portrayed, with Jessica Chastain as a “tough” agent, cold and emotionless. It must have been the only way to film this story so shortly after the events, without turning it into dumb propaganda or, on the contrary, a silly anti-American conspiracy. Thumbs up, for sure, but did I enjoy it? No. It’s still a three-hour long borefest in the desert rather than a gripping war movie.
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