Zero Dark Thirty

Kathryn Bigelow and her writing/producing partner Mark Boals return with a film about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, "Zero Dark Thirty" starring Jessica Chastain as Maya, a young CIA analyst who spends almost a decade (after 9/11) tracking down scraps of leads to find Bin Laden.

It's a long film that focuses on high points of the research and intel efforts (along with the human costs for that intel) that offer the leads to finally pin point the location of Bin Laden to the CIA/Maya. There are scenes of torture for leads and information. There are scenes of frustration and imminent danger of terrorism in the middle east. My issue with the film is that I just didn't really find a foothold in the film with the script from Boals. Sure, Maya is the lead character, and we're supposed to allow her to lead us through the story, but there's something missing for me in how the script unfolds, perhaps I felt Maya was too much of an emotional void to tap into her story, I felt very little for the film's conclusion or subject matter in the end. Was it a lack of suspense? Or maybe a bit of coy-ness in the end, I still just feel shortchanged. Maybe I just felt like most of the 3rd act was directed by a 2nd unit director. So the film is a mixed bag for me, I wanted to like it more, but I just don't.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.