Review of Zero Dark Thirty (2012) by Alvaro V — 15 Feb 2014

After watching this movie, I have to rate Kathryn Bigelow as one of the best current film directors, certainly the best female director of all time! In her previous strong directorial effort, The Hurt Locker, I approached her work in a sceptical way, speculating about many things including her means of politicizing a movie, questioning a woman's effectiveness in directing a war movie among others, how wrong I was! Nothing in her film making has to do with her being a woman or a man, all that is out of the window! She is a great director that can make war movies in a different way that we are accustomed to and that is cause to celebrate! She managed that in The Hurt Locker and she did it again with Zero Dark Thirty! Bigelow doesn't have to include, so many, big explosions and much spilling of blood in her movies, to portray to us the human drama and the tragedy of war.

Zero Dark Thirty is a story of perseverance and patience in an ever more violent and brutal world in the undercover war of intelligence. The heroes of this drama is first and foremost an intelligent under-the-radar investigator by the name of Maya, totally dedicated to her job and her team in trying to mastermind the Al Qaeda network, the people involved in the dirty work of surveiling within hostile circumstances, as well as the Navy Seals who were in charge of getting the final phase of the job done to bring the wanted to justice.

As Maya and her team were hitting a wall in their work combined with their own tragedy, besides their bosses getting nastier each time, perseverance paid off after a change in thinking and approach. Maya pursued a break in the investigation without much trust and support of her own agency, knowing that she wouldn't be getting the due credit even after succeeding, anyway, she did her heroic service and accomplish what she never thought was her target in the first place, by going after a lieutenant in Al Qaeda, she found out that she actually uncovered none other than Osama Bin Laden's own hiding place in Pakistan, the rest is history.