{"id":723,"date":"2013-03-26T11:36:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T15:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/~reviewing\/?page_id=723"},"modified":"2013-03-26T11:54:32","modified_gmt":"2013-03-26T15:54:32","slug":"zero-dark-thirty-big-on-action","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reviewing\/?page_id=723","title":{"rendered":"‘Zero Dark Thirty’ big on action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted March 26, 2013<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

By MIKE LASUSA<\/p>\n

Politically themed art is a tricky subject.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re far enough removed from the times of \u201cLincoln\u201d and \u201cDjango\u201d (and arguably even \u201cArgo\u201d) that we can more easily step back and evaluate art as art, especially in the case of film, where the emphasis is less on making political statements than human ones.<\/p>\n

\"Zero_Dark_Thirty\"<\/a>That being said, I\u2019ll try to stay away from that side of \u201cZero Dark Thirty\u201d and focus on its cinematographic aspects rather than the political controversies surrounding it. Actually, you got me \u2013 I\u2019m kind of a geek for the political stuff \u2013 but I\u2019ll get to it later.<\/p>\n

In fact, the movie\u2019s screenwriter, Mark Boal and I share something in common in that way. Boal embedded as a journalist in Iraq with troops and bomb squads and wrote an article for Playboy magazine about his experience, which eventually turned into the screenplay for 2009\u2019s \u201cThe Hurt Locker,\u201d which he also wrote, and was also directed by \u201cZero\u201d director Kathryn Bigelow.<\/p>\n

Before that, Boal\u2019s 2004 article about the murder of an Iraq veteran by fellow soldiers inspired writer\/director Paul Haggis to fictionalize it for the film \u201cIn the Valley of Elah.\u201d Sadly, \u201cZero\u201d pales in comparison to both of those films. I think Boal\u2019s brilliance comes out best when he\u2019s writing about something only he knows about \u2013 his experience in Iraq, his investigation into the soldier\u2019s murder. Everything in \u201cZero\u201d is public knowledge and there\u2019s not a whole lot of human substance to fill it out.<\/p>\n

As with \u201cHurt Locker\u201d and \u201cElah\u201d I knew the essence of the movie\u2019s plot before I got to the theater. In \u201cZero\u2019s\u201d case, months after the Sept. 11 attacks, George W. Bush said he was \u201cnot concerned\u201d about Osama bin Laden and, while everyone else was busy forgetting about him, one dedicated CIA unit finally found him and took him out after nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s really all you get with this movie. No, you don\u2019t see the clip of President Bush and there\u2019s only a fleeting glimpse of President Obama (in the context of the film\u2019s protagonists wondering if the incoming administration might choose to prosecute them for the torture they used to extract \u201cintelligence.\u201d) Nevertheless, it\u2019s a fun ride.<\/p>\n

The casting department made a good call not choosing big headline names for the film, but Australian Jason Clarke was completely unconvincing with both his American accent (sorry, pet peeve) and his attempt at playing a CIA agent. His lengthy torture scenes at the film\u2019s beginning show his chops as an actor, but it dehumanizes him for the rest of the film.<\/p>\n

How are you supposed to relate to the dude who just strung a guy up, waterboarded him, beat him, deprived him of sleep by blaring heavy metal music in his cell for 96 hours straight, then stripped him naked in front of his female colleague, put a dog collar on him, and stuffed him into a tiny box? And for what? Information they eventually got by basically tricking the guy. Maybe they should have tried that first.<\/p>\n

And yes, those things really happened. Of course, this is a dramatization, but the fact remains that Americans really did these sorts of things and it raises a huge ethical question that the movie totally fails to address. Ostensibly, the assumption the audience is supposed to make is that the characters didn\u2019t think twice about it \u2013 they were doing it to save lives and fight the bad guys and that was the end of it.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the point. The point is that as I watched it, I felt sick \u2013 and I\u2019m not squeamish about movies. I\u2019ve seen some of the \u201cSaw\u201d films and nearly all of Tarantino\u2019s gory oeuvre with no problems \u2013 and it wasn\u2019t even the fact that it was \u201cbased on a true story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jessica Chastain\u2019s character \u2013 Maya, the heroine who by force of will overcomes all the obstacles in her path to finding and taking out bin Laden \u2013 grimaces a few times, but 20 minutes later, she\u2019s putting on a wig and grilling the subjects herself.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no indication of these characters grappling with their consciences, but that\u2019s exactly what it leaves the audience doing. I sat there wondering how on earth \u201cAmerica,\u201d a country with freedom from \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d enshrined in its constitution, could ever sanction such cruel mistreatment of human beings.<\/p>\n

Then I remembered all of the other atrocities our government has perpetrated in the course of its history and I realized that it\u2019s not the job of Boal, or Bigelow, or Clark or Chastain to make us address that issue as a culture and as a society, but they should at least have made their characters address it.<\/p>\n

At the end of the film, Chastain\u2019s character cries \u2013 the only other scene where she does so is after the death of her friend and co-worker in the Camp Chapman suicide attack \u2013 but it didn\u2019t quite fit. Her mission, at work and in her life, was to hunt down bin Laden and she\u2019s finally succeeded.<\/p>\n

Supposedly she was motivated by patriotism and a (not unhealthy) desire for revenge, but about halfway through the story I began to wonder if she might simply be trying to justify the fact that her pursuit had turned her into something of a monster. Then again, maybe that\u2019s why she was crying.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think this lack of humanity was necessarily the actor\u2019s fault. Don\u2019t get me wrong, \u201cZero\u201d is a hell of a movie. Yes, it\u2019s long (clocking in at 157 minutes), but if you take power naps through the scenes where Boal and Bigelow try to add in some Oliver Stone-style gravitas with CIA jargon and operational planning details (irrelevant to the plot, since we\u2019re going to see it anyway), it\u2019s fast-paced and fun to watch.<\/p>\n

In addition to the whole \u201ctorture\u201d question, \u201cZero\u201d generally sidesteps the politics and attempts to focus on the drama. The scene of the raid on bin Laden\u2019s compound is brilliantly intense, and there\u2019s plenty of explosive action and dialogue throughout. It won an Academy Award for \u201csound editing,\u201d which is apparently an actual category \u2013 an honor it shared with \u201cSkyfall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, there\u2019s not a lot of comic relief. I counted maybe four or five laugh lines in the whole two and a half hours. More importantly, none of the characters seem to feel much of anything other than goal-oriented resolve.<\/p>\n

The final scene shows Chastain\u2019s character weeping after identifying bin Laden\u2019s corpse, but as I said before, it just doesn\u2019t fit. Even her tears over her friend\u2019s death seem out of place, considering that her moment grief is interrupted (apparently for the rest of the movie) as soon as a new lead falls on her desk. It seems like this is a lame 11th-hour attempt to salvage some sympathy for her character, but it\u2019s much too little, much too late.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the actual people these roles were based on were not available for comment and I think this goes back to my point about Boal\u2019s writing. He has to get close to his subjects and feel what they feel. He\u2019s done that before and some great films have come out of it, but this just isn\u2019t one of those cases. It\u2019s based mostly on stuff any foreign policy nerd could tell you and the characters (who rarely use names at all other than those of the \u201cterrorists\u201d) are flat \u2013 not boring, just kind of robotic.<\/p>\n

To sum it up, it\u2019s big on action, long on wonky CIA inside baseball, and short on compelling emotions. The flash-bang aspect makes it fun to see in the theater, but I\u2019d wait for the DVD so you can skip to the good parts \u2013 unless you have two and a half hours to waste.<\/p>\n