Edit, After blowing up the downed helicopter, the SEALs fly bin Laden's body to the U.S. operating base in Afghanistan. whose spare-tire cover was emblazoned with an image of a white rhino and was eventually tracked down to the compound where Bin Laden was hiding. Chances are she did something in high school that caught the CIAs attention. The purpose of Zero Dark Thirty is to portray the trials and efforts behind finding Osama Bin Laden. Its constructed like a roller-coaster ride, with its thrills and scares, which the viewer knows will result in successat least, success as defined by those who are involved in the mission. Won Academy Award for Best Sound Editing, many other Nominations. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. In fact, so accurate is the depiction of the events in the film that its makers had to be extra cautious during the casting process. Why does Bigelow show only ones associated with Al Qaeda? . There are those who own firearms and those who dont; those who are familiar with the potential lethal use of forcewho are or were in the military or the police, who own firearms (according to recent polls, about forty-five percent of the country)and everyone else. Abu Ahmed (Tushaar Mehra) - Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti Though his actual identity is now known, he seems to have kept a relatively low profile since leaving Pakistan; we were unable to find a publicly available photograph of him. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty is the story of a heroine. Why were the CIA not more suspicious of the Jordanian doctor? Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. The implication seems to be that Jessica is that mother, whose real name was Jennifer Lynne Matthews. He argued for reality apart from filmmakers interpretations of events depicted, argued for real time, in which things exist, against mental and abstract time.. What a let down. "Washington says she's a killer". But the ending isnt about Maya, its about the viewers interpretations; one is sent off with a litany of talking points. Therefore military helicopter flights overhead were not necessarily unusual, they could have chalked it up to an army night exercise. Why are the SEALs rifling through the house after killing bin Laden? right out of high school; why was she recruited? When the lights came on and I discovered that I had been in my seat for two and a half hours, the movies length came as a surprise. The dogma of ambiguity infects much of the so-called art cinema, a talking-points cinema that passes for cinematic art, such as Michael Hanekes films (including Amour, coming out December 25th) and Christian Petzolds Barbara (coming out December 21st). There is such a thing as radical realism, as in the films of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Abbas Kiarostami, which stick all the more obsessively to the physical in order to reveal the spiritual, the metaphysical, the abstract, the symbolic, in order to create a cinema of truly radical affirmations. What did she put on hold in her pursuit for bin Laden? For one, Mayas friend Jessica, who dies in a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, seemingly refers to Jennifer Lynne Matthews. Edit, SSE is sensitive site exploitation. r/AskReddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions. What about the dog? The targeters contacts with the Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers have also been examined as part of an inquiry, apparently by the CIA inspector general, into the information that agency officials shared with outsiders about the bin Laden raid. She wasn't an ops officer (what most would commonly call a 'spy'), but she served more in what could be called a clerical position. It is possible Boal and Bigelow added that wrinkle in order to make the scene even more dramatic than it actually was. In interview with Reuters Alfreda Scheuer says waterboarding was not torture and insisted such techniques can work. The FAQ items below may give away important plot points. The film is a cinematic page-turner, constructed on a simple architecture: the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, mainly from the perspective of a C.I.A. CIA Director (James Gandolfini) Leon Panetta. It also provided valuable intelligence; terrorists the world over are notorious for keeping extensive records for everything they do. Sold by: Well take a look and remove the review if it doesnt follow our guidelines. Climate & Environment. Ten years is a very long time. Written by Mark Boal, the film follows the decade-long international search for Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks. I can see why she won so many awards for this movie. Zero Dark Thirty tells a . Ultimately, Zero Dark Thirty is a strikingly accurate film when it comes to recreating the details of the years leading up to the capture and the decisive mission itself. non-mutilation torture, e.g. Rated R. Our ratings: V -7; L -7; S/N -2. I got bloodied, she said, alluding to criticism of her agency in government and media reports, and kept coming back to try again and again to do something. The character of Joseph Bradley is similarly based on Jonathan Banks, the then CIA station chief in Pakistan. Zero Dark Thirty suggests that theres a lot of violence being done in the world by bin Laden and his followers; it offers little confidence in the power of diplomacy to oppose it (as, for instance, in the scenes suggesting the betrayal of a C.I.A. Told from the perspective of the CIA agents trying to track him down, the narrative takes a detailed look at the convoluted espionage process that went into finding the real-life terrorist. Yes After being given a prestigious award for her work, she sent an e-mail to dozens of other recipients saying they didnt deserve to share her accolades, current and former officials said. Its like middle-schoolers with clearances.. /. Theres no ideological context for bin Laden or those suspected of association with Al Qaeda; theres also no doctrinal, or, for that matter, personal context for the protagonist. Although they were suspicious, it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up, and they considered it worth the risk. The raid itself is one long boring anti-climax, pretty much like the rest of this movie. What does Maya write (or draw?) Zero Dark Thirty Pic rivets for most of its running time by focusing on how one female CIA agent with a far-out hunch was instrumental in bringing down America's most wanted fugitive. On the one hand, the movie stokes excitement; its not a cool or dispassionate view of Maya and the Navy SEALs, and it depicts their dedication and courage with warmth and admiration. Entertainment & Arts. It is a world removed from her prior life, with the website featuring photos of her, thoughtful and confident. The new unit was called Alec Station, headed by a CIA analyst named Michael Scheuer. Michael Scheuer declined an interview request. Posted on 9/3/22 at 12:45 pm. While critics and political pundits have been writing about the films depiction of torture for weeks, audiences may still emerge with a few questions about the films inspirations. In the final scene, she leans her head back against the wall and starts to cry. When Alec Stations first chief, a man, left in 1999, all of his 14 targeters were women. (A targeter is an analyst who pores over grainy drone footage and sorts through phone intercepts and other fragments of intelligence to find the exact location of terrorists, drug traffickers, or arms dealers.) So the producers of Homeland likely could have had any number of women in mind when they were dreaming up their hero. Scheuer disputes that the CIA was at fault. If you fall under the movies sway, you become complicit in its chain of suggestions and associations. Zero Conscience in "Zero Dark Thirty". The narrative centers on the elusive al-Qaeda head, Osama bin Laden, in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Colleagues said the on-screen depiction captures the womans dedication and combative temperament. Stills from Zero Dark Thirty by Jonathan Olley / 2012 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. I got that title because I was in the arena, she said. Could Maya really have been recruited straight out of high school? Edit, The focus of the scene was that there were three women in the house, meaning that there had to be at least three men, one of whom was never seen. The end show where Maya is sitting is a plane is a total disappointment so why have it? But when dozens of others were given lesser awards, the female officer lashed out. Though Zero Dark Thirty refers to Maya being recruited to the CIA out of high school, No Easy Day says that she was recruited out . Actor Stephen Dillane by The heated topic of the ethics of torture has spilled over into the upcoming confirmation hearings for current White House anti-terrorism chief John Brennan, who has been nominated by President Obama to be the next CIA director. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just to entertain readers. Was there really a dog? Slates Emily Bazelon noted that he might most closely resemble Hassan Ghul, who told interrogators valuable information about Kuwaiti, and may have been subjected to some rough treatmentthough the C.I.A. Indeed, when it comes to hunting al-Qaida, they have at times been the norm: The CIAs first unit devoted to tracking al Qaeda, known as Alec Station, hired women analysts almost exclusively in the 1990s, according to a fascinating piece from the Daily Beast published in September. Now out of the CIA, Scheuers career has taken a turn: She is a life coach, running a business called YBeU Beauty, focusing on helping women look good, feel good, and do good. Boring, tedious and excessively attentive to minutia details while ignoring the main theme of the movie. After Obama took office, CIA operatives reexamined several potential trails, including al-Qaedas use of couriers to hand-deliver messages to and from bin Laden. By: Andrew James, Landon Green, Ryan Randell. Hollywood Catches Zero Dark Fever. Where do you want to go?' That's my guess. The emotional excitement that the movie generates from the start, which soon becomes the protagonists own excitement, and which the movie ratchets up to a peak with the killing of bin Laden, is itself suspect. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Best Movies about modern (post-1900) warfare/military. It might qualify as a spoiler to mention that in a dramatic scene about halfway through the movie, Jessica is killed by a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. This movie is the true story of the hunt for Usama Bin Laden. Recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1999 immediately following her high school graduation, Maya, who has been solely working on the Al Qaeda file, gets her first field assignment in 2003 in Pakistan as an analyst working with an interrogation team. Ad Choices, as reported in the magazine by Dexter Filkins. 3:20 PM. The movie suggests that those whose response to the attacks remains at the level of horror and anger are likely to accept extreme and morally repellent measures taken against anyone who seems connected with the perpetratorsand that these people hold a fanatical commitment to the death of bin Laden, a form of vengeance as justice. the pilot asks, but Maya doesn't reply. On the other, it puts their actions in the foreground and withholds analysis, comment, and context, except by sly association that throws the burden of interpretation on the viewer, not least in the vague ruefulness of the ending, with Maya alone. Direction was excellent but the story leaves us a little overly lacking in caring due to the long length of the movie~. Zero Dark Thirty is a journalistic account of the ten year tracking of "UBL" (Osama bin Laden).Beginning with a black screen, the film opens with mere audible cries from the phone recordings . For his bravery, Cairo earned a meeting with the President himself (described at length in the New Yorker) and was named Times Animal of the Year in 2011. The celebrated Navy SEAL squad that killed Osama bin Laden has been the focus of a series of books, films and video games. But the female targeter was one of the people from very early on pushing this courier approach. 1 3. Only other discussion I could find seems to center around does / should the CIA recruit from high school at all. Both are professionally devoted to avenging the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11although Carrie seems more concerned with future attacks, while Maya is focused on getting Bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 American thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal.The film dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist network Al-Qaeda, after the September 11 attacks.This search leads to the discovery of his compound in Pakistan and the military raid where bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011. Red Letter Media sells VHS copy of "Nukie" on eBay for Harry Melling talks about leaving Dudley Dursley behind Press J to jump to the feed. Her CIA career has followed a more problematic script, however, since bin Laden was killed. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. The movies release was delayed amid criticism that it amounted to a reelection ad for President Obama. Jessica Chastain's character Maya, based on a real CIA operative involved in taking down Osama bin Laden, tells a fellow agent that she was recruited out of high . Maya, like all the characters, like anyone, is filled with thoughts, with an endless flow of internal monologue, with ideas and memories, self-justifications and self-doubts. She said her role was as a subject matter expert, not an interrogator. Still, the similarities between Carrie and Maya go beyond gender. Maya is apparently horrified by the practice, but soon gets sufficiently accustomed to torture that when a prisoner begs for mercy, she flings back at him the line that hes in charge of his own fate (i.e., if he gives the desired information, hell be spared). Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler) Jonathan Banks. One of the merits of Zero Dark Thirty is that it takes government work very seriously and recognizes that the use of force is one of its fundamental responsibilities. agent, Maya (Jessica Chastain), whose . THE HUNT FOR OSAMA BIN LADIN Overly hyped movie~ Jessica Chastain is solid as the youthful CIA INTELLIGENCE person "Maya" who recruited out of high school wants to "get ahead" in her job . In real life, her identity and current position were carefully . (This turn of events is depicted in Zero Dark Thirty.) The film is a cinematic page-turner, constructed on a simple architecture: the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, mainly from the perspective of a C.I.A. Wait until they go through college so they don't have to waste a bunch of time training them. His account was corroborated by two members of SEAL Team 6. The resulting so-called realism is always on the verge of becoming a grotesque lie, because of filmmakers unavowedly ideological assumptions regarding the depiction of physical action as more unimpeachably real than states of mind, regarding the selection of certain actions rather than others as constituting a storyor a film. A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden after the September 2001 attacks, and his death at the hands of the Navy S.E.A.L.s Team 6 in May 2011. Did they still go up to 007, if you couldn't yet count that high? Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for ZERO DARK THIRTY - DVD Rated R at the best online prices at eBay! In the film Zero Dark Thirty, she was the persistent, conscientious CIA officer who finally tracked Osama bin Laden to his lair. And though Jessica Chastains character is called Maya in Zero Dark Thirtythe movie is based on original reporting by screenwriter Mark Boalshe is, in fact, playing the woman referred to as Jen in No Easy Day, as she confirmed at a screening attended by a Slate colleague in New York last night. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 American political action-thriller film. Thus, most of what you see in Zero Dark Thirty can be considered quite close to what historically happened. | Bigelow is more accomplishedshe works harder to reproduce more thoroughly the events she stages and she depicts them in greater detail and with greater energybut her mode of representation is no more original. Anticipating that Panetta would not be impressed with the how he was going to look on screen, Gandolfini has said, I sent a note to Leon saying, Im very sorry about everything. Rated R for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language. Scheuer will not say if she agreed with her husbands ideas but said she debates him on some issues. The story is a very good one but just too long. Photo by Jonathan Olley/Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.; Photo by Showtime. Why weren't the occupants of the house not more alarmed at the approach of the helicopters? Is sitting is a world removed from her prior life, her identity current... 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