Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Genre: Action / Thriller

Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton

Running time: 157 minutes

Zero Dark Thirty depicts the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden that lasted over 10 years after the attacks of September 11^th 2001, through the eyes of Maya, a young CIA officer who had spent all of her short career working on this case.

This film has won more awards than I care to name here, and I have a feeling that seeing it so long afterwards while knowing of those accolades might have skewed my appreciation of it. I expected so much that I could not help feeling disappointed in the end.

The movie started and I quickly felt like there was so great filmmaking at work. I was pulled in as a viewer. Some of those interrogation and torture scenes are hard to take, but I have a strong stomach and I love to be shaken as a cinephile. That stuff was well done, it felt real. Unfortunately, as the film went on, it kept on moving in different directions and it all kept piling on; by the end of it, I could not wait for the closing credits. And at close to three hours, this is a long ride if you keep looking at the time left.

Maybe I was not in the right mood and I should give this another try at a later time, but, while this film has great qualities, it also has great flaws in my book.

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