It seems that since the terrorist attacks in 2001 and the following wars in Iraq and Afganistan, more and more movies and television shows were produced with elements of Middle East tension, a terrorist mastermind, questionable intelligence, or some combination of the above. With the eventual onslaught of bad news from the frontlines of the war and the sheer amount of pop culture fashioned around these modern storytelling tropes, it is easy to grow tired of that trend no matter your innate desire to watch Jack Bauer use "enhanced interrogation" methods. But Zero Dark Thirty's theoretical trump card of a "realistic" portrayal of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is too little, too late, and especially too rough around the edges for the already crowded geopolitical subgenre.
In spite of its numerous nominations and awards, Kathryn Bigelow's film never succeeds in standing out from the crowd since its source material, real life in this case, has been aped from so exhaustively in the past ten years. This isn't necessarily the fault of the film but it is difficult to become engaged in a story that outwardly seems so rote that you can confuse the random acts of violence or Jessica Chastain's dedicated analyst Maya with countless other stories. Also to the film's detriment is Mark Boal's script which conveys the story like random chapters of a large tome rather than a single, self-contained story. Granted, telling a single tale that takes place over the better part of a decade is no easy task and singling out Maya as the film's constant while every other character rotates in and out on a whim is an interesting take. But despite a runtime of over two and a half hours, we never really learn anything about Maya other than her work ethic and she is surprisingly the most rounded character in the film. Jason Clarke appears as a sage mentor for Maya upon her arrival in Pakistan but his character, I'm pretty sure, isn't given a name until he returns home.
Much like Bigelow's previous Best Picture nominee, The Hurt Locker, the film is largely, and fortunately, apolitical leaving out a lot of the wishy-washy political posturing that typically accompanies these stories. Maya's struggles thus are simply laid out for better or worse without further comment on the implications of torturing subjects or trampling liberties. However, Maya is shown mostly autonomous and free of second-guessing from her co-workers or superiors. While that is certainly effective for her, the lack of any real tension aside from the occasional bomb blast threatens to slow down the film to a tedious crawl. That is of course until the final half-hour of the film where bin Laden is located and killed (oops, spoiler).
The final act of the film after which bin Laden is located was retooled for the already in pre-production film after his death but it exists merely as a very long coda to Maya's dedication rather than an integrated part of the film. With the exception of Maya, characters who existed before the raid are mostly discarded and replaced by the Navy SEALs who carry out the extended attack. For a film that has been mostly a hollow character study until that point, albeit a largely effective one primarily because of Chastain's performance, a twenty minute siege filled with explosions and gunfights is an odd juxtaposition. For as interesting as some of the individual elements are, the movie as a whole is quite choppy and derivative. Thus, I can't be too upset that ZD30 lost out at the major awards except on the excellent technical side. Perhaps a little more embellishment and smoothing out would have made a difference.
Comments
Post a Comment