Zero Dark Thirty is an unsentimental procedural
Z ero Dark Thirty is at its core a procedural. Although it documents the largest manhunt of the modern era an effort that defied borders international law and conventional morality it’s not even in the same universe as Hollywood’s usual portrayals of global intrigue. It is certainly intense and the climactic action sequence is as perfectly executed as any to hit theatres in the last year but this isn’t Bond or even 24 . If anything it’s an extended episode of Law & Order — from the early seasons before any of the lawyers had lives outside of the courtroom. It is remarkably single-minded.
The same could be said of Jessica Chastain’s Maya the fictional (or at least fictionalized) CIA agent at the film’s centre. Recruited by the CIA straight out of high school Maya devotes a full decade of her life to one task: finding and killing Osama bin Laden. We watch as she transforms from a nervous rookie uncomfortably overseeing “enhanced interrogation techniques” into a hardened operative and the only one who seems to have a clue how to track down the world’s most notorious fugitive.
That shift comes entirely through action. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal (the director and writer behind The Hurt Locker ) have no interest in making internal conflicts explicit. There are no scenes where characters hash out the morality of their actions or the toll that any of it takes on their personal lives. In Maya’s case it seems unlikely that she even has a personal life.
It’s an approach that could come across as overly detached or even cold but “unsentimental” seems like a much more appropriate word. When your subject matter is as loaded as 9/11 it’s easy to fall into gung-ho patriotism or sanctimonious preaching but Zero Dark Thirty does neither. It unflinchingly acknowledges that torture took place but at the same time it hardly plays up the effectiveness of those techniques. However you feel about the CIA’s actions going into the film you’ll likely feel exactly the same walking out.
That ambiguity is exactly what makes Zero Dark Thirty so effective. It doesn’t provide answers. It seems reluctant to even dictate the questions. Instead in approaching the hunt for bin Laden the same way you’d approach any police procedural Bigelow and Boal let the story stand on its own merits leaving the implications up to the audience to decide.
