Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar with "The Hurt Locker" and it seems she’s either fascinated with the war on terror, just really good at making movies about the war on terror, or both. I’d have to go with both. The original focus of the film was supposed to be about the December 21st battle of Tora Bora, also a film about Usama Bin Laden. When they were about to begin filming, news broke of the successful raid of the Bin Laden compound in May of 2011. Bigelow immediately shelved her Tora Bora project and redirected her focus.
In this review, I’m going to do a little bit of comparison between "Zero Dark Thirty" and "Argo". They are completely different movies, but they are both historical and both are going to be mentioned a lot in the days and night leading up to Oscars. While both are factual accounts and both tried to be as accurate and true to the real events as possible, I found "Zero Dark Thirty" to be a cut above "Argo" for one glaring reason. Bigelow did not rely on Hollywood gimmicks to ramp up tension; she allowed the real events of the story do that. Affleck, with "Argo", I think did.
Bigelow cast an extremely talented and fearless actress in Jessica Chastain who has been absolutely on fire since breaking onto the scene. After making her film debut in "Jolene", she continued to ‘wow’ casting agents and landed parts in big time films like "The Debt", "The Tree of Life", "The Help", "Lawless" and "Zero Dark" among others in just three years time. Now, she is the favorite to take home Oscar for this film, and you will see why. Chastain, had to be tough as nails and vulnerable as well in order to pull off Maya. Maya is a CIA agent who spent 12-years in the agency doing one thing, tracking Bin Laden and risking everything on a thin and muddled lead that she had found Bin Laden’s currier.
"Zero Dark Thirty" is not only incredibly accurate, it is an important piece of filmmaking that makes you question many things. The torture tactics that were used were important to finding Bin Laden, but also those tactics mixed with kindness may have played an even bigger part. The film also shows how incredibly complex and difficult it is to navigate the terror networks and as much as everybody likes to paint a yes and a no, a wrong and a right on everything done or to be done, there is nothing definitive in the war on terror.
"Zero Dark Thirty" is a fantastic film that I have no doubts will make Oscar voting very difficult this year and will certainly make voting for Best Actress very difficult as well. It is an important movie about history and an inside look at the intelligence battles that our agents are fighting everyday to keep us safe.
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