[xrr rating=5/5]
The theatre screen is completely black for the first two minutes of the film. All you can hear are air traffic controllers speaking to planes in the sky. Next, you hear the frantic phone calls from innocent souls trapped in the World Trade Center buildings. People are calling 911, screaming that they’re burning up. Family members (just like yours and mine) are talking to love ones, saying their last goodbyes. Some are begging emergency response teams to please help them. You hear technicians talking with the military, saying “This is not a drill, this is real life.” You hear them asking for help in the air, “Scramble some F16’s”… The United States is under attack on September 11, 2001.
You see none of this. You don’t see innocent victims jumping to their death. You don’t see the buildings come crumbling down. You don’t see people running for cover as a giant smoke cloud chases them through the New York City streets. And you don’t see fire fighters and police officers running to their deaths, in hopes of saving some innocent lives…. Yet, you see all of this. You see it all vividly in your mind, because we have all lived through this. We lived through the horror of 9/11.
And so begins the epic film, “Zero Dark Thirty.”
I want you all to remember what I just wrote about this opening scene. This is one of the most powerful scenes I’ve NEVER seen in a movie… Ever. You don’t even see one little blip of that fateful morning. It’s just a dynamic, gripping way to open this film… We’ll get back to that.
“Zero Dark Thirty” tells the story of the greatest manhunt in history. The decade long hunt for Osama Bin Laden, the despicable man, no, animal that orchestrated the attacks on U.S. soil.
The story is from firsthand accounts from reputable sources like senators and political types. But I’m not sure how deep they can truly get into it. From what I can gather, wasn’t this mission supposed to be top-secret?
But this is Hollywood and you have to have a story to make a film work. So Mark Boal, a writer with the wonderful accomplishment of writing the Academy Award winning “The Hurt Locker” on his resume, wrote the screenplay for this film.
It follows Maya, (Jessica Chastain) a CIA operative, recruited right out of high school, and her unrelenting persuit to capture the world’s most wanted criminal. Maya is a driven young lady hell bent on capturing Bin Laden. This is all she knows. It’s all she’s ever done. Her whole professional life has been dedicated to one thing and one thing only, capturing, and or killing (ok, just killing) Bin Laden.
Maya is involved in everything. Everything from the meetings with the most important political types, to dealing with the military grunts down in the war zones, and to even being involved in the torturing of prison detainees of Bin Laden’s highest officers. She sees it all. She’s right there when her main military man, Dan (Jason Clarke) waterboards one of the higher-ups in Bin Laden’s terrorist factory. She watches Dan stuff this low life piece of rubbish into a hot-box, (which is a 2 foot by 4 foot or so plywood box) where he is crumpled inside for days on end. They torture him by playing loud, heavy metal music all night long, causing sleep deprivation… (You know what? I wouldn’t mind that one, as long as it was Guns’n’Roses’ they were jamming.) And the worst torture of all, having your slacks ripped down to your ankles while a girl (Maya) just stares at your junk. Dan even says to his prisoner, “In the end, everybody breaks. It’s geology.”… Hey, we’re at war and torture is involved. I’ll get back to this part of the film later.
The film chronicles major attacks on other foreign nations too. It shows the bus bombings in England and the bombing in 2008 in Islamabad. It even talks about the failed Times Square attempt on December 30th, 2010. And the story takes place all over the world. It jumps from the tribal territories in Northern Pakistan, to many CIA blacksites in Poland and Afghanistan, and right here in Washington D.C. Eventually Maya gets a great lead on where Bin Laden may be holed up and the story turns to SEAL Team Six, the Navy’s ‘best-of-the-best’ combat men.
I think we all know what happens when SEAL Team Six got involved. Let’s just say it makes for a fantastic ending in which we all know the outcome.
I’ve given you the layout of the film, now I want to tell you what I thought about it. (Because honestly, my opinion is the only one that ‘MATT’ers.)
First off, this may be the best film of the year. (It’s top three for me.) I learned more about Bin Laden and the war on terrorism than I did in the decade it took to us to kill him. I keep up on my current events, but I never really knew too much about ‘The Saudi Group’ and other little parts of the film, like, how long it took us to go get Bin Laden after we knew where he was. I’ll say it right now, many politicians are wimps. (I had another word for them, but it would’ve DEFINITELY been edited… It begins with a “P”.) There’s a great line in the film where one government official says to another, “How do you evaluate the risk of NOT doing something?” It’s just a brilliant line.
Next, I want to talk about the actors. Jessica Chastain is fantastic as a timid, but not at all timid CIA operative. She seemed frail, but she definitely wasn’t AT ALL. She took a made up character and gave her a wonderfully dark and sometimes disturbed personality. She was also VERY focused on her task at hand.
And just one other actor. Jason Clarke. I don’t know this guy from anything, but I fell in love with his character right away. He was tough and determined, yet he seemed calm while going through some of the most intense scenes in the film. I loved his role and I’ll keep an eye out for this man.
I must also say that Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) has another magnificent turn as director. I think she got robbed when she was not nominated for Best Director at this year’s upcoming Oscars.
And finally, I want to talk about the torture in this film. It’s been a topic of conversation on many levels from talk shows to internet articles, to sports radio shows. Listen, I’m going to tell you what I think and if you don’t agree with me, that’s ok, it just means that you’re wrong. First, do you remember how I started this article? Do you remember people jumping to their death? Do you remember the buildngs crashing down to Earth and innocent victims on planes just trying to go on vacation or to see family members across the country? Do you remember that they were members of not just their own families but also of our American family? Well I do. And I have also heard people saying that the torturing of these prisoners was inhumane… You know what I say about that? SO WHAT! These scumbags had information on the whereabouts of the pig who planned these attacks on us. They had information on other attacks around the globe that were set to go down and take more innocent lives. At the very least, they had information on bad stuff… Remember, these prisoners were not just plucked off the street and tortured. Our U.S. government, and other governments around the world had intel on all these ignominous, loathesome humans (if you can even call them that) and we needed to extract information from them for the safety of our families and all innocent people around the world.
I have no problem with torturing these vile dirtballs. They chose a path that led them to this. Where the hell are your morals? Killing is the biggest sin in the world! I mean, it’s the number one sin in the book: Thou shalt not kill! I mean, come on, you lemmings! If you’re part of the Taliban, well, you’re pretty much asking to get your head kicked in.
Secondly, the torture scenes in this film were tame compared to what I would have done to them. I mean, waterboarding? Man, that stuff was happening to me every day up at Fr. Mac’s pool when I was growing up. And that hot box? Please. Try sticking five brothers in a crowded attic bedroom after a 98 degree day, when our bedtime was seven o’clock at night! That hot-box looked luxurious! Personally, if I was at the helm of this torture party, my methods would first involve a heavy duty bench vice and a terrorists ‘privates’… Said area would be placed inside the vice and and then the vice would be twisted until one of two things happened. One, this loser gave up all information on EVERYTHING that he knew. Or two, parts of his anatomy started popping until he bled out. Yeah, I’m sorry, this may sound gross, but I truly believe most men will give up their mother just to stop the genital agony from going on… I seem to believe if you want to find the truth out from a man, work the crotchal region. They’ll give up the information you’re looking for.
Anyway, that’s just me speaking from my cuckoo, wacked out mind right now… But I do want you to remember that these people are BAD people. (They’re not just people we randomly picked out of a hat.) They killed our American brethren and someone has to pay, or it will happen again. Just think, what would you do if someone senselessly killed your family? I don’t know for sure what I’d do… but I have some ideas… and they start with a heavy duty bench vice.
I absolutely LOVED this film. It’s one of my favorite movies of 2012. And I don’t think that another movie could be made about the hunt for Bin Laden that would even come close to this… It is a ‘must see’ film.
“Geronimo… For God and Country.”
Matthew W. Kelley
Fun Fact: Director Kathryn Bigelow’s ex-husband, James Cameron was previously in negotiations to direct this film but dropped out to produce the sequels to “Avatar.”
Fun Matty Fact: This is not really a fact but just an observation. Many people in Pakistan sit on the side of the road crouched down like they’re baseball catchers. It’s not a cool look… It looks like they’re grunting one out.
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