Zero Dark Thirty (Review)

Capture of dreaded terrorist Osama Bin Laden is the focus of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. Director Kathryn Bigelow has taken real accounts of the sequence of events leading to the killing of the dreaded terrorist.  The nail-biting operation begins with the entry of a female officer at an unidentified CIA base in Afghanistan.

The protagonist Maya (Jessica Chastain) has specialized in her research on Osama and works for the CIA. Her expertise in technology, ability to do research and also passion to find the man, force the CIA top brass to send her to the US embassy in Pakistan. She works with Dan, a fellow investigator (Jason Clarke) to interrogate a detainee with suspected Arab terror links.

False leads, wrong clues and a blast at the CIA black site by terrorists have already demotivated officers at the base. They use extreme torture tools to extract information. When Maya loses her friend and colleague in the blast, she firms her resolve to stick to the case, toils nights to find the missing link.

She motivates the team and other investigators to help her continue the search. The prime suspect refuses to cooperate and continues lying about the whereabouts of Osama. He finally breaks down after Maya keeps interrogating him, plying him with incentives. The officers finally track down the missing link, a high-rank Taliban, who has been hiding the most wanted terrorist in Pakistan. Maya puts pressure on her reporting officer to tell the US president Barack Obama to issue orders for the crackdown. She even accompanies the team for the mission. The scene that nearly takes your breath away is Maya’s expression when she lifts the cloth off Osama’s bullet-ridden dead body before it is flown away in the aircraft.

This 2-hour, 40 minutes film is so real that it motivates audience to give a standing ovation for the Navy SEALs and the CIA team who finally crack down on Osama’s house in Abbottabad.