ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012) a movie review

What I like most about the movie is that the heroes are the boots on the ground CIA members and the painstaking work they do to keep the world safe. Our media is only interested in making heroes and villains out of our Presidents and other elected officials, but it’s the CIA people that are a constant as party politics shift back and forth at the national level. If you are not risking your personal skin in the fight then you really aren’t a hero. This movie is about heroes.
 
Most movies tend to be a cartoon version of life with everything having a clean answer and no loose ends left. Zero Dark Thirty is played in the reverse. It’s a complicated movie about the various tactics used through the years that led to the capture of Osama Bin Laden. While in real life we heard that waterboarding is torture and torture never works narrative from our media, in the movie those interrogation techniques yielded information that led to the capture of more terrorists that eventually led to paydirt. We can argue about the morality of those techniques but they work in a way that complicates easy answers. When national chatter includes prosecuting CIA operatives that used those techniques, it’s the people in this movie we would prosecute. What makes ZERO DARK THIRTY great is that it doesn’t stop the debate over the techniques but it makes weigh their success into your worldview. While The Hurt Locker shows you what it’s like to be a soldier during the war years, Zero Dark Thirty show you the intelligence struggles. The two movies together are best document yet of the challenges of a post 9-11 world.