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<\/a>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong> <\/p>\nJonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em> <\/p>\n
Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant<\/a>. <\/p>\n
ZERO DARK THIRTY<\/strong><\/p>\n
The makers of \u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019 clearly want it to be the definitive film about the ten-year manhunt to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, claiming the film is \u201cfaithful to the facts\u201d, \u201ctruthful\u201d, \u201cjournalistic\u201d, and \u201cliving history\u201d. But if that\u2019s their claim, how come the first 30 to 40 minutes of \u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019 are about how torture was *instrumental* in locating the courier who eventually led the CIA to bin Laden, despite the fact that the acting director of the CIA and the chairmen of both the Senate Intelligence and the Senate Armed Services Committees have publicly stated the opposite? And should the film\u2019s seeming endorsement of torture disqualify it from awards consideration?<\/p>\n
The film stars Jessica Chastain as Maya, a hard-charging young CIA agent who has devoted her professional life to finding bin Laden. It\u2019s Maya who believes that the path to finding bin Laden is through the courier who helps deliver his messages to Al Qaeda leaders and the media, since bin Laden would be too wary of surveillance to use phones or the internet. Maya and her colleagues attempt to locate this courier, an eight-year odyssey that involves surveillance, battles for resources, frustrating delays, life-threatening risks, and old-fashioned detective work. When the courier is finally located and leads to a suspicious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Maya is convinced that this must be bin Laden\u2019s hideout.<\/p>\n
Based on a real person, Maya is a fascinating character that Chastain handles wonderfully, both because of and in spite of the fact that we know so little about her, she isn\u2019t the most likable person, and her single-minded dedication to her mission increasingly borders on obsession. The supporting cast \u2014 including Jennifer Ehle, Jason Clarke, James Gandolfini, Chris Pratt, and Harold Perrineau \u2014 are all good and reflect the hundreds of people and the multiple organizations involved in finding and killing bin Laden. The film\u2019s natural lighting, verit\u00e9 shooting style, and attention to detail successfully builds tension while also showing the often unglamorous nature of intelligence work. And when the Navy SEAL raid to get bin Laden finally occurs, it happens in almost real time over 40 gripping minutes in a carefully reconstructed replica of the actual Abbottabad compound.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s this attention to detail that makes the torture aspect of \u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019 so baffling, infuriating, and unforgivable. It\u2019s been accepted for decades within the intelligence and interrogation communities that torture simply doesn\u2019t work and mostly leads to false confessions; strained relations with allies; prisoners made belligerent, insane, or useless; and victims\u2019 families, friends, and sympathizers turned into sworn enemies. At one point, Maya says that getting bin Laden would protect the homeland. But after Guantanamo Bay, the invasion of Iraq, and the photos from Abu Ghraib, no one needed an order from bin Laden to justify attacking Americans or our allies.<\/p>\n
Some critics have claimed that the torture scenes in the film reflect the \u201cmoral ambiguity\u201d of the torture debate. But since the torture in \u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019 is shown to be so effective, with one prisoner actually saying \u201cI have no wish to be tortured again. Ask me a question and I will answer it”, and we\u2019re shown none of the many downsides to torture, the \u201cmoral ambiguity\u201d amounts to \u201ctorture is ugly\u2026but it works\u201d. For way too many people, that\u2019s not morally ambiguous at all, and is instead seen as the dirty but necessary work of war.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s a claim as factually wrong and repulsive as saying, \u201cRape is horrible\u2026but some girls are asking for it.\u201d In reality, there is no debate and no \u201cmoral ambiguity\u201d about torture. Not only is it illegal, immoral, and counterproductive, IT DOES NOT WORK. But \u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019, like the TV show \u201824\u2019, claims that torture DOES work, or at the very least, revives the myth that the jury is still out on torture, just as oil companies and republicans want you to think the science of global warming is inconclusive. \u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019 works as a crime procedural, but its irresponsible, destructive, dishonest stance on torture absolutely ruined it for me, and I feel \u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019 should not be on *any* best-of-the-year lists, nor is it deserving of Oscar consideration.<\/p>\n
\u2018Zero Dark Thirty\u2019 is rated R and opens today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33548,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33539\/revisions\/33548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}