Zero Dark Thirty

**ganulv** · 01-12-2013

I would rather have seen the shelved movie about Tora Bora. The subject matter of ZDT obviously has more mass appeal, though, so I can see why it ended up being made instead.

**davidbfpo** · 01-15-2013

A review by Steve Coll:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/arch...gination=false

Yes his focus is on torture:

Zero Dark Thirty was constructed to bring viewers to the edges of their seats, and judging by its critical reception, for many viewers it has succeeded in that respect. Its faults as journalism matter because they may well affect the unresolved public debate about torture, to which the film makes a distorted contribution......public support for torture has risen significantly during the last several years, a change that the Stanford University intelligence scholar Amy Zegart has attributed in part to the influence of “spy-themed entertainment.”

**ganulv** · 01-15-2013

I saw the film Saturday night and was underwhelmed. Like Coll, I had trouble looking past how the narrative was constructed. The relationship of the characters and the events is just so Hollywood-ish. For instance, the Camp Chapman bombing is chalked up to Jennifer Ehle's character's girlish giddiness to make a scoop that she hopes will get the President's ear. It is typical for the film, in which most of the successes and failures are individual rather than institutional.

The movie wasn't all bad. Edgar Ramirez is great is always, and there are a few good one-liners peppered throughout the script. ("What do you think about Pakistan so far?" "I think it's pretty f*cked up.")

**Bill Moore** · 01-22-2013

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB410/

A wealth of information from the National Archives Zero Dark Thirty File.

Zero Dark Thirty 's screenwriter, Mark Boal, has claimed that the film is "a movie not a documentary" and should not be treated as history. But the U.S. government's widely reported support and its official silence about the raid have made Zero Dark Thirty (the military designation for 12:30 AM) more than a mere thriller. Today, in an effort to balance the record, to the extent currently possible, the National Security Archive has collected, posted, and analyzed in one Electronic Briefing Book all of the available official documents on the mission to kill the notorious al-Qaeda leader. The documents include:
• The earliest known official document mentioning Osama bin Laden, a 1996 CIA biographical sketch and his FBI "Most Wanted Fugitive" poster which spelled his name "Usama," but included his now ubiquitous mug shot.
• A leaked memo from Guantanamo Bay, describing the "Autonomy of a lead" and how the CIA determined that Abu al-Kuwaiti, once Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's courier in Kandahar, may have escaped Tora Bora with bin Laden, and continued to deliver his messages.
• The National Geospatial Agency's satellite images of the Abbottabad compound pre- and post-construction and the DOD's official conceptual illustration of its floor plan.

And more

**davidbfpo** · 01-24-2013

A long review, with praise and some acute barbs - from Rolling Stone magazine:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...erica-20130116

On the director's adjustment:

There's no way to watch Zero Dark Thirty without seeing it as a movie about how torture helped us catch Osama bin Laden. That's why I was blown away when I read this morning that Bigelow is now going with a line that "depiction is not endorsement," that simply showing torture does not amount to publicly approving of it.

On the wider context, which we've seen before:

Zero Dark Thirty is like a gorgeously-rendered monument to the fatal political miscalculation we made during the Bush years. It's a clich but it's true: Bin Laden wanted us to make this mistake.

The review cites another article, to make three points about the failure of torture to help - worth reading just for that. The other article, long is:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-g...b_2345589.html

**parvati** · 01-25-2013

The torture scenes were totally disturbing, it makes me queasy even thinking about it!

Like Bourbon said, there isn't a pro/anti stance regarding torture. It does show that the detainee program was successful at least in gaining intel that led to UBL. It makes me wonder how much intel is being lost due to the whole drone versus capture/interrogate strategy?

Looks like the timeline and characters are mashed up a little bit. The COS of Khowst having having lunch at the Marriott in 2008 when the bomb went off?

Some linguistic inconsistencies were there, such as Pakistanis screaming “yalla yalla” in Arabic after the attempted assasination in Ibad.

The movie does a good job in portraying the uncertainties and risks surrounding the raid.

Ill probably watch it again at some point.

**carl** · 01-25-2013

I won't see Zero Dark Thirty. From the things I've read here and the linked reviews, it seems as if it just an another installment in the ongoing attempt by some segments of Hollywood to convince the Americans that torture is ok.

This saddens me to no end because when I was a boy, the Hollywood movies I watched argued that a reason the totalitarian states were bad was because they tortured. They were right then. They aren't now. I breaks my heart that an important segment of the American cultural elite has surrendered its soul.