Zero Dark Thirty

Beyond all of the politics, current events, and torture button-pushing, Zero Dark Thirty is actually a very simple, functional story. A good guy is trying to catch a bad guy. Slay the monster. There are progressions and setbacks. The good guy is determined. The monster is elusive. And eventually, as the facts tell us, the monster is slayed. So it’s basically Jaws. Jessica Chastain is perfect in this. Unknowable and still engaging. Katheryn Bigelo is at the top of the game. She’s always been a strong director, mining great performances and keeping the pace brisk. The “controversial” torture scenes are almost unnecessary, and they certainly don’t “endorse” torture. But I also don’t think that the stupid, fake controversy is keeping the movie from winning all the awards. The truth is the main character is not very complex. Her single-mindedness makes the movie play more like an action movie and less like a transcendant drama. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s nothing nearly as deep as Jeremy Renner’s bomb disposal guy in The Hurt Locker. So as good as this movie is, it hits an emotional ceiling, one that probably mirrors the world’s feeling about the killing of Bin Laden. And the movie ends with that conflicting sentiment: Good job, but what’s next?