Zero Dark Thirty Vol: The Hunt for Osama bin Laden

movie was mad overrated.
I was really curious to see this.. but i thought it was boring, more like watching a goddamn documentary..
 
Son really compared OBL to a final boss in Call of Duty.
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What is it about this movie? I caught it Friday night and just couldn't come up with words for it. Saw it again Sunday night and still. The movie is well done. Not as consistent as Hurt Locker, but it means more, because ******g Osama. Jessica Chastain is really good, not her best, but her really good is better than almost anyone's best right now. Argo is technically better. Argo's got better cinematography, pacing, direction, editing, ensemble, dialogue, so many things.

But even though it really happened, Argo's a movie.

Zero Dark Thirty is ours. It's a documentary. It's a bitter memento of a world we helped build cast in stone. The last 20 minutes of this will stay with me forever. Every time I think about 9/11, Osama bin Laden and the war on terror, images of the end of Zero Dark Thirty flash in my head.

What is it that makes a conversation so hard to sustain? Is this film just criticism-proof?


And 'this condones torture' is a not real criticism. That's reaching at it's finest. The people around the torture weren't well realized. Bigelow thought she was being matter of fact and neutral, but it felt like she was punking out on taking a stance and in movie logic that all led to the big lead on Osama...and in the real world not taking a firm stance on torture is considered condoning torture.
 
Saw it last night. Worth seeing but something I'd wait and Redbox. Movie was long but it kept my attention. Not a fan of the cast.
 
MrONegative said:
What is it about this movie? I caught it Friday night and just couldn't come up with words for it. Saw it again Sunday night and still. The movie is well done
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Your first sentences are how I feel. I went to write up some thoughts earlier and I was left with a few four word sentences. 

The tension and suspense of the raid scene was tremendous. Chastain was outstanding. I don't know if I liked the structure and pacing of the movie. I suppose it reflects the nature of the hunt. You get a lead, it builds to something then it explodes and you're left picking up the pieces. I felt that sense while watching, and after I saw it I was exhausted... and considering Chastain's final scene, maybe that was the point.

I felt they tried to walk the line and keep it as neutral as possible in regards to the torture, was it all worth it, at what cost, etc. I don't know if that was the right decision or not, but I think it would help form my opinions better.

I'll read the many articles I've starred and saved about the movie that I can finally read and I'll come back to it.

Definitely one of the better movies of the year. Not Best Picture worthy for me. 
 
MrONegative said:
What is it about this movie? I caught it Friday night and just couldn't come up with words for it. Saw it again Sunday night and still. The movie is well done. Not as consistent as Hurt Locker, but it means more, because ******g Osama. Jessica Chastain is really good, not her best, but her really good is better than almost anyone's best right now. Argo is technically better. Argo's got better cinematography, pacing, direction, editing, ensemble, dialogue, so many things.

But even though it really happened, Argo's a movie.

Zero Dark Thirty is ours. It's a documentary. It's a bitter memento of a world we helped build cast in stone. The last 20 minutes of this will stay with me forever. Every time I think about 9/11, Osama bin Laden and the war on terror, images of the end of Zero Dark Thirty flash in my head.

What is it that makes a conversation so hard to sustain? Is this film just criticism-proof?


And 'this condones torture' is a not real criticism. That's reaching at it's finest. The people around the torture weren't well realized. Bigelow thought she was being matter of fact and neutral, but it felt like she was punking out on taking a stance and in movie logic that all led to the big lead on Osama...and in the real world not taking a firm stance on torture is considered condoning torture.
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If you really want to explore the very real and legitimate criticisms of this film, then do so. But don't prop up fake criticism just to knock it down.


'Zero Dark Thirty' Is Osama bin Laden's Last Victory Over America | Matt Taibbi | RollingStone

Here's my question: if it would have been dishonest to leave torture out of the film entirely, how is it not dishonest to leave out how generally ineffective it was, how morally corrupting, how totally it enraged the entire Arab world, how often we used it on people we knew little to nothing about, how often it resulted in deaths, or a hundred other facts? Bigelow put it in, which was "honest," but it seems an eerie coincidence that she was "honest" about torture in pretty much exactly the way a CIA interrogator would have told the story, without including much else.

There's no way to watch Zero Dark Thirty without seeing it as a movie about how torture helped us catch Osama bin Laden. That's why I was blown away when I read this morning that Bigelow is now going with a line that "depiction is not endorsement," that simply showing torture does not amount to publicly approving of it.

If Bigelow really means that, I have a rhetorical question for her: Are audiences not supposed to cheer at the end of the film, when we get bin Laden? They cheered in the theater where I watched it. And is Maya a good character or a bad character? Did she cross some dark line in victory like Michael Corrleone, did she lose her moral self and her humanity chasing her goal like Captain Ahab, or is she just a modern-day Sherlock Holmes (or, hell, John McClane) getting his man in the end?
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MrONegative said:
The people around the torture weren't well realized. Bigelow thought she was being matter of fact and neutral, but it felt like she was punking out on taking a stance and in movie logic that all led to the big lead on Osama...and in the real world not taking a firm stance on torture is considered condoning torture.
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Mo Matik said:
If you really want to explore the very real and legitimate criticisms of this film, then do so. But don't prop up fake criticism just to knock it down.
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:nerd:

How is that fake criticism? She didn't take a firm stance on torture in her film, but the idea and plotting behind those scenes weren't a mistake. It hung over the entire film, and implicitly left its fingerprints on everything that happened after it. Every choice people made, every attack on them, every frustration they ran into was soaked in the things they did to human beings to try and find someone who proved to be more of a symbol than anything imminent and real. But the characters involved in those scenes were not well-realized enough. They were one-dimensional character types that never landed on one side or the other, but just accepted that those were orders.

The problem with the torture isn't what Kathryn Bigelow's intentions and beliefs behind it were, but that she did a poor job directing and maintaining any real nuanced characters within the scenes.

To me, it's a failure in filmmaking, not philosophy.

I really don't believe she condones torture. And if you put real consideration into the scene where they actually do get a lead, it's when Maya treats the detainee like an intelligent human and manipulates him like a legitimate interrogator would. And then there's the very ending of the film when she just cries at what they gave up as people to get him and whether it was worth losing what made us better for this bittersweet moment of cold vengeance.

It's on Bigelow and Boal that this is pretty close to a character-less film for 2 hours. They didn't especially humanize anyone until the last act, and the person they did humanize before that...well it was obvious what they were setting up. People making an issue with the torture scenes keep doing the same thing of not bothering to look at the film as a whole, because then they'd realize, their issues with the torture scenes are issues that show up throughout the film, out of context with torture. Their issues aren't political or philosophical, but filmic and directorial.

They have an issue with the film as a film, not as a set of political beliefs.
 
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Amazing movie, easily jumped to my top 10 list of '12. I was hooked, loved the entire structure of it, how suspense was built without having blood shed, how it portrays a secret mission of such, by showing how it is executed, very quietly and secretively. In addition, what made this movie really stand out from the rest in my opinion is Kathryn Bigelow emphasized the personal side of such a mission. Even though CIA agents are probably trained to be unemotional, viewers got a pretty good glimpse at what can and does happen to Maya, throughout the mission.
 
How is that fake criticism? She didn't take a firm stance on torture in her film, but the idea and plotting behind those scenes weren't a mistake. It hung over the entire film, and implicitly left its fingerprints on everything that happened after it. Every choice people made, every attack on them, every frustration they ran into was soaked in the things they did to human beings to try and find someone who proved to be more of a symbol than anything imminent and real. But the characters involved in those scenes were not well-realized enough. They were one-dimensional character types that never landed on one side or the other, but just accepted that those were orders.
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I feel like you make the criticism you say isn't legitimate.

If someone makes a depiction of anything, they choose what to include and what to exclude. If you portray torture as a one way 1 dimensional path, leading up to the capture of OBL without any acknowledgment of the negatives and clear moral sacrifices, then you are portraying it in a positive light. When in reality, torture did as much to lead us away from OBL as it did towards him.
 
Move sucked until you got to the last 30 mins. I saw previews for the movie and for some reason they only showed the last 30 mins during the previews.  I was duped into seeing this boring 2 hour long interrogation. The female lead was not a strong character and didn't bring anything to the movie.

I took two good naps and the movie still wasn't over.

As for Bin Laden. Americans are so easily duped. Lets say we really did capture Bin Laden and throw his remains off a boat...our economy is still in shambles and we're still fighting bogus proxy wars so why  the heck are people so enthralled with this mythical caricature of the mass media--Bin Laden?

We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because of "Bin Laden." There hasn't been any credible evidence that Bin Laden has even been alive for the past 10 years and suddenly everyone buys into the fact that he was killed and thrown off a ship? America loves to boast about killing "wanted" men. I refuse to believe that we ever killed his guy in the way that the military says we did. Bin Laden is America's new "Big Foot" --a mythical product of hysteria.
 
Movie was overrated. It made the Osama manhunt in to be a one person event. BTW, her acting job was overrated as well. She was better in Lawless.

The first hour I was thoroughly confused. They had a bunch of characters and names with no character development. I just went along with it. I was glad I didn't pay for it, or I would have fallen asleep for the last hour.
 
MrONegative said:
What is it about this movie? I caught it Friday night and just couldn't come up with words for it. Saw it again Sunday night and still. The movie is well done.
But even though it really happened, Argo's a movie.

Zero Dark Thirty is ours. It's a documentary. It's a bitter memento of a world we helped build cast in stone. The last 20 minutes of this will stay with me forever. Every time I think about 9/11, Osama bin Laden and the war on terror, images of the end of Zero Dark Thirty flash in my head.

What is it that makes a conversation so hard to sustain? Is this film just criticism-proof?


 
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Mo Matik said:
I feel like you make the criticism you say isn't legitimate.

If someone makes a depiction of anything, they choose what to include and what to exclude. If you portray torture as a one way 1 dimensional path, leading up to the capture of OBL without any acknowledgment of the negatives and clear moral sacrifices, then you are portraying it in a positive light. When in reality, torture did as much to lead us away from OBL as it did towards him.
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That's the thing. That's baggage people bring to the film. The film itself shows the corruption of this teenage girl. It shows the misinformation (when the detainee lists off the days of the week and says he knows the show bomber) that comes from torture, as well as the lunacy of our expectations of it. And the fact that she did find that lead in other, legitimate ways. I don't think that's seeing it in a positive light. If anything the torture is the most living, 3 dimensional character in the film. It's the people around it, our clear ciphers, that are slacking.

And when the terrorists assault a hotel or send in their triple agent, THAT is the moral negative. Because the very first scene was where we went and what we became in response to modern terrorism. It makes you makes you question how much worse are the things the bad guys do versus what our 'good guys' have done. Look at the price of not considering these terrorists as intelligent human beings.

And who won in this?

I think it's ridiculous to say this condones torture. It condones choppy, disjointed characters. It says something about the director being too afraid of pissing either side off that she tried to skate down the middle and did a disservice to her own film, but the screenplay is right there.

I just don't understand how we finally got this...very important and generation defining film, but managed to break it down to this one point of contention and one perspective, instead of the bigger dialogue. It's people not taking the film as a whole.

If this was as well directed as Argo, maybe we'd be having that conversation. But to ignore what's right there in the film, because the characters didn't hold your hand through it, is doing a disservice to the message and meaning of it all. That's wishing you could've shot the film the exact way you wanted it to come out, vs having a moral problem with what the film tried to say.
 
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Cats said:
I took two good naps and the movie still wasn't over.
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:lol: :lol: :lol:


As for Bin Laden. Americans are so easily duped. Lets say we really did capture Bin Laden and throw his remains off a boat...our economy is still in shambles and we're still fighting bogus proxy wars so why the heck are people so enthralled with this mythical caricature of the mass media--Bin Laden?

We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan because of "Bin Laden." There hasn't been any credible evidence that Bin Laden has even been alive for the past 10 years and suddenly everyone buys into the fact that he was killed and thrown off a ship? America loves to boast about killing "wanted" men. I refuse to believe that we ever killed his guy in the way that the military says we did. Bin Laden is America's new "Big Foot" --a mythical product of hysteria.
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>D
 
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Propaganda. The whole purpose is to spread anti-muslim sentiment.
What are you all so afraid of?
 
movie is overrated imo. and i hate those war films that are basically commercial advertisements for the military. like act of valor. after i saw that i was ready to sign up LOL
 
Just finished this....wow. Almost 3 hours I will never get back. This movie was terrible. A buildup of boring *** talking for 2 hours and then the Bin Laden home invasion wasn't even entertaining to me. The torture scenes were child's play compared to other movies..hell even TV shows. I struggled getting through this movie. I started it last night and paused because it was making me sleepy. Product of the hype machine. It's a joke that this is nominated for Best Picture.
 
USAFAnt said:
Just finished this....wow. Almost 3 hours I will never get back. This movie was terrible. A buildup of boring *** talking for 2 hours and then the Bin Laden home invasion wasn't even entertaining to me. The torture scenes were child's play compared to other movies..hell even TV shows. I struggled getting through this movie. I started it last night and paused because it was making me sleepy. Product of the hype machine. It's a joke that this is nominated for Best Picture.
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My thoughts exactly. I thought I was the only one who thought this movie was complete crap. this movie is getting way too much hype. like you said this movie is way too boring. the acting was good but I didn't care for any of the characters or the completely boring story. TBH, I went into this movie with low expectations because I never wanted to see it because when I saw the trailer for this movie it didn't appeal to me at all. (I wanted to see gangster squad, but since I had a 10$ gift card and arrived at the theater late, I had to choose between watching this and silver lining's playbook and since I wanted to see a fun action flick this movie was the closest to it but I was way wrong about that, I should've went to see silver lining's playbook instead) I couldn't wait for that movie to finish. I hated that movie. I don't get where all the hype is coming from.
 
I just got around to seeing this. The movie sucked.

The dialogue at times was cheesy, "I'm the MFer that found the compound".

There was no emotional connection to her friend that got blew up at the base so it was just like, whatever.

The navy seals acted like high school kids. With the smirks and stuff when she says Osama Bin Laden may be in there. Then the seal complains about the last time they thought they had Bin Laden. I'm sitting there like, is this guy supposed to be a navy seal or what? During the movie they talked about how many lives were taken because of these terrorist attacks but then the seal thinks Bin Laden is a joke?

Then she was everywhere in the movie. She's at the Marriott during the bombing, she's with the navy seals, she's in the rooms torturing people. I'm surprised they didn't have her go to the compound with the navy seals and kill Bin Laden.
 
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