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 (4)
Plots(1)
For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (17)
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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"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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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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I understand that September 11th was a huge shock for the United States and shook the confidence of a superpower, something that the Soviet Union was unable to do throughout the entire Cold War. I understand the need to come to terms with the execution of the mastermind of the attack through artistic means, and I also understand the power of symbols. However, I was surprised by the flood of awards from festivals. To be clear, it is somewhat of an art to make a chase for the world's most wanted terrorist so boring, unengaging, and tedious. It is almost incomprehensible that even scenes of torture or assassinations are emotionally empty, no passage is able to draw the viewer into the game, and everything is mechanical, cold, and flat. The presence of acting stars does not help at all, as this directorial style could easily be utilized by unknown second-rate actors and the result would be the same. I do not understand the superlatives regarding the final action. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that alongside the ridiculously drawn-out footage, the film is harmed most by the minimal distance from the events. It is evident from what is portrayed that the creators, just like American institutions, have not understood the truth about Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda has never been a vertically built, centrally controlled organization with a strong leader at the helm. It is more like an "international workers' movement," a community of people united by Islamist ideologies and drawing strength from the conservative environment of Islamic society. Osama was important for the Western world, not for his fellow believers, and at the time of his execution, he was long gone from the game. Overall impression: 35%.
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The perspective of one of the workaholic cogs in an overseas bureaucratic machine for the search for a "symbol of all evil" - a.k.a., a procedural drama in the purest possible form. As interesting and detailed as it is, it's also cold, audience-unfriendly, and requires more than a cursory knowledge of the events. The first, office hour is significantly better than the second, which for logical reasons was fundamentally reworked from the original concept. There is no propaganda, and the Allies come out no better than "the bad guys," but nevertheless if a (much) longer time had elapsed since these events, it would have been better.
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