Zero Dark Thirty – My opinion.

So, I went to see Zero Dark Thirty tonight. I enjoyed it, but it definitely didn't live up to the hype. But then again very few movies do. At 157 minutes, it is about an hour too long for its content. Many scenes are overly long, and several scenes are redundant.

The movie is mostly about the intelligence effort that went into finding Osama Bin Laden, and I was surprised at what a minor part the SEALs had. My understanding is that there is quite a bit more to the SEAL involvement that would seem to be tailor made for a Hollywood movie, but almost none of it was used. It's clear that the director's intention was to make a CIA-centric movie.

My original hope when I went to see the movie was to be able to comment on the combat scenes... were they realistic, or were they cartoonish? As it turns out there wasn't much there for me to comment on. I saw a couple things that looked irregular, but all-in-all I'd say the action, what little there was, was pretty good.

The film does contain some depictions of torture, and apparently this has some people wound up. There seems to be this ideological belief among many people that torture “doesn't work”, and they complain at the depiction of torture being used productively. I find such a perspective curious. There is a very good quote in the movie that sums up the situation, both in the movie and in real life, quite well:

“In the end, bro, everybody breaks. It’s biology.”

All in all I'd give the movie a B. It's worth seeing, but it could have been a lot better. There is definitely some “chick flick” influence there, and for me that took away from the movie.

Here are a couple trailers I found on YouTube: