Jim and I played hookey Tuesday morning and went to see Zero Dark Thirty, partially because we had heard good things about the movie and partially because we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.  (Slight digression:  Dear Senators who don’t believe in the First Amendment:  please understand that the more fuss you make about a movie you don’t like, the more people will want to see it.)

Anyway, I haven’t seen any of Kathryn Bigelow’s other movies (although The Hurt Locker is on my list), so I can’t compare this movie to her other ones.  What I can say about Zero Dark Thirty is that the movie is surprisingly tension-filled despite the fact that the audience knows how the movie ends.  In addition, for all the deafening silence that Hollywood has expressed despite threats by governmental officials regarding the movie, the movie does not hide how inhumane and inhuman torture is, as it shows the effects of torture on both the interrogators and their victims.  The movie also does show that torture can be effective in extracting information but that it comes with a price–the loss of the moral high ground and the violation of the principles under which the United States was founded.

Zero Dark Thirty is not an action thriller movie, despite the impression the movie trailers give.  It is about the painstaking hunt for Usama Bin Laden, which involves tracking down every lead, no matter how trivial, and does not involve thrilling action scenes.  The most exciting action scenes are all in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, as the Navy SEALS attack Bin Laden’s compound.  Despite, or maybe because of, all the caveats, we found the movie excellent and compelling.  I think, perhaps, that Argo was a better movie at building suspense despite the known outcome (see my review here), but Zero Dark Thirty was a well-paced movie, demonstrating the difference one person’s persistence against all odds can make.