Zero Dark Thirty

On 1 May, 2011, Amer­i­ca final­ly got its bogey­man. When Kathryn Bigelow heard the news, she was ready to shoot Bin Laden her­self, primed for a film on Osama’s escape from the bat­tle of Tora Bora. Zero Dark Thir­ty is her rapid response.

Like The Hurt Lock­er, her film is case-hard­ened, sharp and unsen­ti­men­tal, resis­tant to the heat of pay­back and with its eye on the jour­ney, not the des­ti­na­tion. Ques­tion is, released a year-and-a-half after Bin Laden’s death, can audi­ences han­dle the truth? More to the point, can Bigelow?

Span­ning 10 years, three con­ti­nents and two pres­i­den­cies, the hunt for Bin Laden was a matrix of frus­tra­tion, as scram­bled as the ⁹⁄₁₁ mes­sages that open the movie. Writer Mark Boal’s tena­cious research has, nonethe­less, pulled some­thing from the data-stream: the sto­ry of Maya, a female CIA ana­lyst whose 12 years at the agency were laser­sight­ed sole­ly on nail­ing Bin Laden. The film’s asser­tion that the world’s most want­ed ter­ror­ist was caught by an agent with a hunch is as unlike­ly as it is com­pelling and serves as an invalu­able dra­mat­ic ​‘in’, if not an emo­tion­al one.

No sur­name, back­sto­ry or even any down­time, Jes­si­ca Chastain’s iron-willed Maya is anoth­er of Bigelow’s career obses­sives whose grim infat­u­a­tion is reward­ed with bit­ter vic­to­ry, first over Al-Qae­da, then her own macho asso­ciates – ​“I’m the moth­er­fuck­er that found him!” she yells dur­ing an agency pow-wow, in a Brock­ovich-like out­burst des­tined for YouTube parody.

Com­piled from first-hand accounts and designed as docu­d­ra­ma, Zero Dark Thir­ty makes a big deal of its verac­i­ty, but it’s essen­tial­ly obe­di­ent to genre. Dri­ven by Maya’s pro­fes­sion­al mania, the film assumes the shape of a steely ser­i­al-killer pro­ce­dur­al, with its dead ends and red her­rings, its evi­dence walls and fanat­i­cal pro­tag­o­nist. Punc­tu­at­ed by dra­mat­ic recon­struc­tions of real events (includ­ing 7/7), the film dredges up the twitchy dread of the Ter­ror Years.

The influ­ence of Fincher’s Zodi­ac, anoth­er tale of man­ic obses­sion, looms large, as does Olivi­er Assayas’ mas­ter­ful minis­eries Car­los (the cast­ing of Edgar Ramirez feels like an act of pure homage). Per­haps Bigelow’s shrewdest move is resist­ing the temp­ta­tion to deep­en the shad­ows, suck out the light, kill the colour and make it ​‘dark’.

Yet Grieg Fraser’s pho­tog­ra­phy is crys­tal-clear and clear-eyed – the style is a state­ment. These are the facts, it says – unblink­ing, noth­ing to hide, the back­room manip­u­la­tions of the Bush-era exposed and indict­ed in broad day­light. Water­board­ing may have got results, but Zero Dark Thirty’s tor­ture scenes smack of authen­tic shame.

It’s only in the final act that Bigelow suc­cumbs to her Hol­ly­wood impuls­es and that title lives up to its PlaySta­tion shoot­er con­no­ta­tions. Blond, buff and beard­ed, SEAL Team Six have been Chuck Nor­ris-ed by wardrobe and Point Blanked by Bigelow.

The moment their stealth chop­pers scoop through the Sar­ban Hills, guid­ed by the CIA in their NASA-style com­mand base, the film switch­es gen­res and Bigelow starts talk­ing action slang – they could be off on an Alien bughunt. Breach by breach, breath by breath, the real-time assault unfolds in illic­it night-vision, its out­come assured but staged, nonethe­less, with prick­ling suspense.

The Big Moment hap­pens in a flash. No lin­ger­ing mon­ey shot. Osama, a phan­tom fig­ure through­out, dies as he lived: in the shad­ows. Times Square won’t be cheer­ing, but the gung-ho glam­our has the smell of vic­to­ry. If that’s the way Hol­ly­wood does cathar­sis, so be it, but there’s a far bet­ter movie before it.