Zero Dark Thirty

‘Zero Dark Thirty’, half past midnight, is the codename for the US Navy SEAL raid that took out Osama bin Laden in May 2011. The film, directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written/produced by Mark Boal, concerns itself with the CIA’s decade long search for him and more specifically the obsession of one woman to get her man.

It is a fictionalized account that is apparently as 'accurate' as they could be and is partly based on what was in the book ‘No Easy Day’ by Mark Owen, who participated in the operation. It is told very much from the US perspective and that has left the film open to accusation of propaganda. I have no idea how realistic it all is but I’m open to anyone’s account. It is also not your typically polished Hollywood production, thankfully, and is more of a documentary drama.

The woman with the obsession is Maya (Jessica Chastain). We never find out much about Maya other than that she was recruited right out of high school, so clearly she wasn’t your typical teenager. She maintains her focus on bin Laden throughout despite the numerous attempts by her, usually male, superiors to dismiss her theories.

The film opens in audio only from the 11^th September 2001 with recordings of the emergency telephone calls from people trapped in the Twin Towers. It is occasionally difficult to watch. There are a few torture scenes at the beginning, which although they aren’t too graphic are still quite disturbing. If it is disturbing to the viewer, it is also disturbing to Maya, at least at first. When we first meet her in 2003 at a 'black site' (e.g. secret site) she is observing another CIA officer called Dan (Jason Clarke) interrogate a detainee using waterboarding and other forms of torture. Maya looks distinctively uncomfortable throughout but she soon gets the hang of things.

Then via other terrorist atrocities such as the London bombings we gradually home in on bin Laden, zigzag style and perhaps more by chance than anything. As for anyone who is levelling claims of propaganda, I’m not sure if they mean this in a positive or a negative way because although they eventually kill bin Laden, at times it’s more of a film about their failure to find him. What were they messing around at?

Even then, some of their successes seem improbable, like when a terrorist finally spills the beans over lunch. Almost as improbable are their failures, the relaxation of security so that they won’t spook an informer ends in the entirely predictable explosion of a military base and several deaths. Not very bright.

Much of the film takes place in meetings full of middle management and at times it can be confusing as to the approach they’re taking or not taking. In the end the entire operation hinges on catching a courier who they seem to find only because somebody discovers something they overlooked years earlier. It doesn’t actually make the CIA look very good at all but they got there in the end.

Still, I was riveted by it all and I’m a total sceptic. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if ten years down the line they say well actually guys it wasn't actually bin Laden we killed... So if this is just sort of the truth, sort of as it is now, then that's fine. Good film.

Hurt Locker

‘Hurt Locker’ opens with a failed bomb disposal attempt in Baghdad, during which the team’s leader and disposal expert gets killed. The story concerns his replacement, Sergeant Will James who at best can be described as a maverick. When James arrives, Bravo Company have thirty-nine days left to serve. It will be a long thirty-nine days for James’s team of Sanborn and Eldridge, who are simply happy just to keep their heads down and stay alive. Consequently they are shocked by James’s unnecessary risk tasking and rightly so.

I didn’t understand the opening scene. The bomb that kills his predecessor is triggered by a mobile phone but rather than shooting the guy with the phone, the other soldiers rather tamely shout him to ‘put down the phone’. This kind of sets the tone for the rest of the film. It’s all good exciting gritty stuff with a good dollop of suspense thrown in but it's also probably totally unrealistic.

Hurt Locker is not my usual sort of film but I felt I had to see it when it won lots of awards. It’s a decent film, well acted and well made but, as you watch it, it certainly doesn’t strike you as anything that would be likely to win any awards. It’s entertaining but at the time it didn’t really occur to me just how unbelievable it all was until I started writing a review of it.



For a start the bomb disposal team hardly seemed professional even before James arrives to disrupt them. They seem to wander around Iraq a bit like we used to around Nottingham as students in between lessons at Uni.

Then James arrives and things get even more reckless. He clearly gets an adrenaline rush from disarming IEDs (improvised explosive devices), regardless of the risk to his safety or that of others. Preferably he’d like to be peppered with sniper fire whist he’s doing it. Which may be fair enough, maybe, but would the army really let him get away with being so reckless? His attitude puts others at risk. Anyone behaving in that way would either be severely disciplined or severely dead.



He refuses to use the bomb disposal ‘robot’ and annoys his colleagues by removing his radio headset. At one stage when he encounters a car bomb he removes his protective suit as he looks for the trigger wire. Brave or just plain stupid?

Then when he encounters the dead body of what he thinks is a young Iraqi boy he had befriended, that has been turned into a body bomb, he goes off on one and attempts to find out who is responsible. In Baghdad, on his own, at night. Then he simply wanders back through the streets to the compound. A bit far fetched I would have thought. Then he enlists his team to help him pursue his personal quest and gets one of them shot in the leg.



We never quite get to the bottom of why he behaves like this. We just assume he’s a nutter. We do see him back at home with his family, visibly bored. Without the stimulation of war he is nothing. So at the finish we find him back in Iraq, ready for another year in the war zone.

So it's another gung-ho American war film then, realism suspended, but gets the best picture Oscar. Sorted.