Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Kathryn Bigelow's unflinching drama about the hunt to find and kill Osama Bin Laden may or may not be 100% truthful but it's brilliantly made and emotionally engaging enough to be worth all the praise it is receiving of late.  I found myself completely taken back by its complexity and densely researched plot, so much so that I almost forgot I was watching a dramatization of a real historical event and not the event itself.   There's a lot of talk about how accurate it is and for me that's irrelevant, the producers of the film have a job to tell a story with the information they have and to do so without sacrificing the story.  They're going to take liberties in order to compress a decade of investigation gathering and terrorist activities into a two hour film.  I'm fine with that.  The aspect of the film that was most telling for me was how hard terrorism is to defeat.  With terrorist groups scattered across the globe and terrorists purposely being kept in the dark, no wonder it took so long to find the most wanted man in U.S. history.  Then the political delays were nervous politicians and analysts try and determine certainties for an uncertain enemy is also telling.  As for torture, I wouldn't necessarily say the film is pro-torture; at the same time it is graphically demonstrated and you do wonder if without it our heroine, played with raw intensity by Jane Chastin, could have collected enough information to come up with her main lead.  Obviously torture is awful and should be banned as a way to a means and yet there's an evil truth that this film presents and that sometimes to stop an evil, one must become evil.  It's immoral to say the least.  We should stand on higher morals and do the right thing even under duress.   Yet for most of us, if we're completely honest with ourselves, we would have no problem humiliating, starving and causing pain to an individual if it would save those we love.  Grade: A