Review of Zero Dark Thirty (2012) by Michael W — 16 Feb 2015

Did you like Hurt Locker? Did you, like me, upon reading the hype and watching the trailer for this, reading all the names attached, think hey, this might be a bit preachy but over all a really well made piece of work? Did you? Well if you did, I'm really sorry to burst your bubble but this ineffective drivel, just kind of drips out for almost 3 fuckin hours! I, like before have stated that I adore epic films, christ one of my favourite films is Tora, Tora, Tora! And thats round about the 4 hour mark.

But what sets those films aside from Zero Dark Thirty, is not only the fact that in the entire time it was on, I only remembered the name of the protagonist, Maya, i'll get to her performance in a minute, the entire story has NO characters! It has woeful writing, it is uninteresting and non thrilling in anyway.

Thought watching soldiers breach Osama Bin Laden's fortress would be tense, you know, like how it would have been for the president? Kathryn Bigelow, the woman that brought us the super tense Hurt Locker, makes that entire sequence seem like an episode of Coronation Street.

Bare with me here because there is a lot to talk about here. Zero Dark Thirty revolves around the events between September 11th 2001 and May 1st 2011, basically the time in which it took for a horrendous spree of terror attacks on the world and an atrocious war by our home lands on iraq and afghanistan, a plethora of torture and humilation of pow's and eventually the assassination of Osama himself.

We follow specifically, the uninteresting story of Maya, who is assigned to the CIA in the middle east straight from graduation. She is introduced to a world of torture and fear, attempts on opperatives lives, however she is so commited over the time span to catch a messenger boy, that she eventually is led to what she believes to be the compound in which Osama may be hiding.

Sounds great doesnt it? Lot's to work with, millions of different angles to look at the situation from, lots of tension, lots of character building..... Maya is not a character, she is a paper thin all american stereotype plopped on screen from start to finish and shows about 2% of a character arc throughout.

I'm not blaming Jessica Chastain, she just has nothing to work with at all here, her dialogue is atrocious! When asked, by a government official who she is, her reply is and I quote "I'm the mother fucker who found him", have you ever, ever in your life, heard anyone say that? Honestly? It's alright though because this script writer seems to think that writing swear words every 4 lines makes your film gritty and serious, more like it makes you look like a 15 year old writer.

Excited to hear about the rest of the cast, Mark Strong, Harold Perrineu, James Gandolfini, John Barrowman, Kyle Chandler, Joel Edgerton, Jason Clarke and Chris Pratt? Well ladies and gentlemen dont be because, between all of the combined, the have a total of, say 20 minutes screen time, maybe 30 at a push.

You have all these fantastic actors working on what should be a tense story line and instead you have them walking into a room, swear and walk out. Every single actor on that list swears multiple times in the small moments they have to inspire us.

Kyle Chandler puts in the best effort as the head of opperations, but for some unexplained reason he just gets flung away half way through, well just because. John Barrowman is in the film for 4 minutes, is his inclusion and talent warranted or needed for the role? No! He is not played to his strengths at all! James Gandolfini is ok, but your looking at the screen and going, oh look theres James Gandolfini because the dialogue is so horrendous by the time it takes him to get on screen, youve found a way to filter the words from your head.

Scenes play out like this, swearing, something shocking, conversation, cars, lots of muslims walking about, CIA talking, torture, cars, something shocking, conversation. So on and so forth until the final sequence, which is so dark, presumably to cover up how bad the cgi helicopters are, that you cannot see a dam thing.

All you see are little lights running about in the dark, with the occasional outline of a building (Luckiliy the compound is bright white, which helps in extreme darkness). The entire thing looks like its shot off the back of a camera mans shoulder, fine, does it add anything? No! Some shots a so terrible you cant even work out why they exist in the film.

Ever wanted to see a dirty shot with an out of focus corner of a barrior, with the roof of a car drive into a building? Didnt think you did. What else is wrong with this film, well Zero Dark Thirty feels the need to inconsistantly insert screens telling us the name of the chapter? Why, well just in case you got so bored with it you needed to work out what was going on.

I understand there is a lot of time hopping, so i'll let the every 2 minutes being in a different location and having them write a paragraph of where they are, but seriously you need a title card to say "Human Error" before a scene that lasts 2 minutes, where Mark Strong swears for a minutes and then some girl you dont know shows up with a file out of the blue and goes "Hey human error!" NO! This is not how you make a film, christ! Film is a visual medium, if I cannot work out a rough idea of what is going on by just looking at it, what hope has anyone else got? Problems just solve themselves, with zero tension involved.

And finally the films biggest and most vicious flaw, who am I suppose to be routing for in this film? I'm presuming its the Americans, however they are shown to be so disgusting that, the film actually has you question if a terrorist group are the good guys! This film actually makes you feel bad for people who want to kill and strike fear into the hearts of others, if thats what it was intended to do then great but eh, whats with all the high and mighty American "Fuck Yeah!" war machine glorification? Now I am by no way saying that I condone the actions of any terrorist group but this film made me question it.

Mixed in with paper thin characters, the good guys really arent ones to route for. Does it do things right? Meh, occasionally, there are springs of something gritty and horrific but its dealt with in such a "Fuck Yeah!" way that I have no reaction to it.

I jumped once in this film, due to a jump scare. The rest of the time I spent just wondering where it all went wrong. The script was not focused, the actors under utilized. The action, non thrilling, the look, ho hum! Music, barely noticed it! As I write this review I am already forgetting most of what happened in it, worthless, paper thin and totally mixed messaged.

Honestly, just avoid the thing.