Review of Zero Dark Thirty (2012) by Tradetherookie — 08 Apr 2013

And who is Mia besides a great agent? Who is she as a human character? What’s her backstory? Why is she doing this? Would have been more involved if one of her family members died in the September 11th Attacks or something but the movie won’t go that far because they want to stick to true accounts. The only emotion we see from her other than the eagerness and get Bin Laden is her sadness when Al Qaeda bombed that CIA base that her partner was at and the tears that come out her eye after she confirmed that it was Bin Laden that was shot. It would be great if there was some interesting backstory. If there was a reason she was doing this that could be shown to make the audience like her more. If we take out the context of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and just look at the story of Maya fighting terrorists and catching a highly sought after terrorist leader, can her story stand on its own legs? Not to me, it can't.

Maya’s confidence is a big theme in this movie but the consequences of her being wrong is not addressed in a conflicting or dangerous manner.

Consequences: The possibility of Bin Laden not actually being in the Abbotobad compound was heavily addressed through the uncertainty of most of the characters beside Maya. However, the consequences were not explored! Because this movie is a true account, we know what is going to happen at the end. But why should we care if we are not sure of the consequences of what could happen? In Argo, we know they’re going to escape but there are some minor consequences we hear about: death by execution, foreigners getting caught in the airport, being hung in the streets. Even those consequences were weakly displayed. But what are the consequences if Bin Laden is not in the compound? Whose head will fall? What effect will it have on America? On the President? On Leon Panetta? On the continued activities of the CIA? Why aren’t people getting angry or playing politics on what could happen? Why is there no serious conflict here? What about other consequences? What if the Pakistani air force attacked them? What if the local police or militia did? Most importantly to the story of the movie, what happens to Maya if she is wrong?

Put Aside The Story of Maya: Did the film producers create the film because they had this unique story about a young, ambitious, female CIA agent who managed to deduce the location of a highly wanted and highly elusive criminal target? Or did they create the film because they wanted to show the steps taken to find and kill Osama Bin Laden? I think the film producers were “sold” on making the film based on the latter whether or not their interest began with the CIA agent story.

True Accounts: I read the basic Wikipedia summary on a handful of potential consequences and strategies surrounding the raid and these summary items went in so much more depth than the movie did. What if there was a bunker underneath the house? Why did they choose to do a raid instead of bombing? Or instead of a targeted drone strike? What was going on with Obama during this time? Just like in Argo, where we see nothing strategic and deep with Jimmy Carter, we see nothing interesting with President Obama, who is the final decision-maker in this whole process. We see no strategy in how the U.S. would know if the Pakistanis released the fighter jets because they have a deal with the Pakistanis that the jets given to them by the U.S. would be under 24-hour surveillance? What if Osama was wearing a suicide vest? How would they have handled it? What if there were mines on the doors? And these are just little wikipedia summary items that I skimmed. I expect a producer of a film to do highly extensive research and give me all the good stuff. There’s so much reasoning and strategy that is just dropped from this movie.

Other Ways To Tell The Story: Telling the story from the perspective of many people instead of the CIA agents would have given the movie a lot more depth. It would have been great to see what Obama, Panetta, the Admiral, and the CIA director were going through. How they didn’t want to be wrong. They could have told this story from many different perspectives and many different people. But they chose the story of Maya which is boring to me.