Zero Dark Thirty

Kathryn Bigelow has an affinity for keeping her finger on the pulse of the War on Terror. After winning Best Director and Best Picture in 2009 for The Hurt Locker, Bigelow has apparently decided she isn't done with the subject. Keeping with the style used in The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty is a personal, semi-fictitious chronicle of Osama bin Laden, and if the Academy feels the same way Sunday as they did in 2009, it's lined up to do very well. It deserves it.

The first thing that struck me about Zero Dark Thirty was its brutal frankness. The first scene of the movie, involving rookie CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) and her more experienced partner (Jason Clarke) interrogating a terrorist is simultaneously gut-wrenching and captivating. It also set the tone of the film: nothing is going to be held back. Starting with that 2003 interrogation, the film follows Maya as she works the hunt for bin Laden, transforming from a naive rookie agent into a relentless manhunter with an incredible intensity that upholds my thought that Chastain might be one of the greatest actresses of our generation. Her supporting cast in no slouch, either. Clarke is a chillingly captivating standout as Dan, a ruthless CIA interrogator that nonchalantly calls terrorists "bro" while waterboarding them for information. His lack of nomination as Best Supporting Actor is an abysmal mistake.

What makes Zero Dark Thirty stand out from every other movie about the war on terror, for better or for worse, is its sense of pacing. The movie spans a total of eight years, and that leaves a lot of ground to cover. The scenes in the movie are all very intense, which makes watching every individual one an emotional experience that is so often lacking in war movies. Unfortunately, a running time of over two and a half hours means that all of those intense scenes that follow every minute aspect of the hunt start to get taxing after a while.

Zero Dark Thirty is not for everyone. Those looking for an action movie need to look elsewhere, as the only action takes place in the last 20 minutes. However, if you're idea of a good war movie involves the dramatic minutiae of undercover operations and intelligence gathering, then this might be the best war movie you've ever seen. I give Zero Dark Thirty 9 shady intelligence deals out of 10.