{"id":741,"date":"2013-01-31T09:57:59","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T14:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=741"},"modified":"2013-01-31T09:57:59","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T14:57:59","slug":"zero-dark-thirty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=741","title":{"rendered":"Zero Dark Thirty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim and I played hookey Tuesday morning and went to see Zero Dark Thirty<\/span>, partially because we had heard good things about the movie and partially because we wanted to see what all the fuss was about.\u00a0 (Slight digression:\u00a0 Dear Senators who don\u2019t believe in the First Amendment:\u00a0 please understand that the more fuss you make about a movie you don’t like, the more people will want to see it.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, I haven\u2019t seen any of Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s other movies (although The Hurt Locker<\/span> is on my list), so I can\u2019t compare this movie to her other ones.\u00a0 What I can say about Zero Dark Thirty<\/span> is that the movie is surprisingly tension-filled despite the fact that the audience knows how the movie ends.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Zero Dark Thirty<\/span> is not an action thriller movie, despite the impression the movie trailers give.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The most exciting action scenes are all in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, as the Navy SEALS attack Bin Laden\u2019s compound.\u00a0 Despite, or maybe because of, all the caveats, we found the movie excellent and compelling.\u00a0 I think, perhaps, that Argo<\/span> was a better movie at building suspense despite the known outcome (see my review here<\/a>), but Zero Dark Thirty<\/span> was a well-paced movie, demonstrating the difference one person\u2019s persistence against all odds can make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 (Slight digression:\u00a0 Dear Senators who don\u2019t believe in the First Amendment:\u00a0 please understand that the more fuss you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41],"tags":[337,70],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-movies","tag-zero-dark-thirty"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-bX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":743,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}