Saw Zero Dark Thirty

[Crockett]

It's an intense, captivating movie. I like movies that give me a history and geography lesson. No question the movie has aspects that are subject to dispute, but I feel I have a much stronger understanding of how the CIA works and what it is up against.

 

[l00p]

Just saw it and agree.

 

[arieshorn]

I saw it recently too. It boggles my mind what all goes in to intelligence gathering on a world wide scale and the lengths we go to stay ahead in the game. I have to admit the the raid at the end was gripping even though I knew the outcome. I couldn't figure out where I've seen the lead actress in recently and she was in Lawless. I IMDBed her and then I realized I've seen a good amount of movies she's been in. lol She won the Golden Globe for Best Actress for Zero Dark 30 and I imagine she will take the Oscar too in March. Great film. I loved Katherine Bigelow's first movie "The Hurt Locker" and Zero Dark 30 is just as good.

 

[huisache]

after fifty years of hiding what they do, the cia came out and helped make this movie, which is why it seems real.

The fbi always cooperated with the movie people and had a real good time of it as a result, with everybody thinking what a swell, effective bunch they were. This in spite of the fact that their whacko leader kept insisting there was no such thing as the mafia and neglecting to send his supercops after them.

Go look at an old fbi procedural now and compare it to what is now known about it and ask yourself how honest they were.


The cia is now using hollywood to spread its bs and people are slobbering over them. They couldn't kill Castro, they got viet nam wrong, they got iraq wrong (SORRY ABOUT THAT, CHIEF) but now they are doing a good job protecting us from al q et al.

engrossing film I am sure but don't mistake it for reality.

 

[Crockett]

Some things, like what a street scene looks like in the Middle East or what the Bin Laden compound actually looked like, are things a little different than in my imagination. I have a better picture of the scene now. Also, I think, the reliance on individual ingenuity rather than collective ingenuity is probably not the exact theme the CIA publicists would want to project.

 

[arieshorn]

What I found interesting is that Maya said she was recruited right out of high school? How does that work? Like was it a job fair or something? lol She said she has worked on nothing except Bin Laden for 12 years since she joined the CIA. Interesting.

 

[l00p]

There are profiles that they look for, certain things that may happen during your life and how you handle them. What they call talent may be considered hardship or a rigid ability to overcome tragedy or loss. Not insensitivity, just select sensitivity.

Um, I had a family member, a parent, whose story went that way. Not out of HS but the military. It's sometimes tough on the children too. Make that often times tough on the family.

 

[FAST FRED]

I saw it several weeks ago and didn't review it fully then because I thought it missed its chance to be really, really good since it was often hard to follow the intelligence gathering and it didn't show things like Osama bin Laden hiding behind his wife when he was shot.

I know spying often is slow, mostly meticulous, unrewarding immediately and is sometimes hard to evaluate and that movies about intelligence work regularly display those same characteristics, doubtless to accurately reflect the nature of the beast.

And movies about secret raids are often display the characteristics of secretive raiding to remain true to that beast.

I like mystery and enigma, but I also like to know pretty much exactly what's gone down when I leave the theater.

I didn't expect a documentary film about these events from Hollywood, but I would've liked more resolution and clarity in the end.

I think films like "All the President's Men," "The Conversation," "Blow Out" "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and more recently "Pulp Fiction," "The Social Network" and "No Country for Old Men" had screenplays that epitomized taking mysterious events, secret raids, spying or subterfuge and bringing them into focus by the end of the last reel.

I prefer that, personally.

Kind of like a good caper movie.

"Zero Dark Thirty" failed to do that for me as much as I would have liked.

So I downgraded it in my personal evaluation.

I've learned more from watching TV and reading books and news reports about intelligence gathering overall and the Obama raid specifically than I did from Kathryn Bigelow's movie.

Jessica Chastain was great.

I recognized the excellence in the film, but I was disappointed when it left so much which is already known and reported unclear and unportrayed on the screen.

JMO.

 

[huisache]

FRED: thanks for bringing up All The President's Men. It is a perfect example of what I was referring to above. It simulates reality but is not. It does not clarify anything but merely appears to. You would never know from watching it that the snitch Deep Throat was not a concerned insider trying to derail Nixon's illegal acts out of a sense of respect for the constitution. He is portrayed as a good guy trying to help the newspaper save the country.
What is not shown and what we know now is that Mark Felt was a disgruntled FBI man angered that Nixon did not appoint him to replace Hoover and was trying to bring down the government in retaliation. And did. And Woodward knew it at the time and he and the paper's editor both went along to get the story.

It was a palace coup. That was the real story and it is not even hinted at in ALL TP'M. If you think I am exaggerating, read Felt's tell all and the book Woodward wrote admitting it a couple of years ago.

The notion that Zero tells the truth about how the hit on Osama was set up or carried out is what the CIA wants us to believe. Whether it is informing us correctly is another matter.

What might be more useful for our purposes is a film about how many screwups our overpaid bureaucrats committed that allowed the 9/11 murderers to carry off their plot. We could start with the flight instructor who got suspicious about the arabs who wanted to learn to fly but didn't care about taking off and landing, told the FBI and then they dropped the ball one or two rungs up.
No films based on historical events have ever been particularly accurate. The devil is in the details and they get them wrong. Shakespeare's history plays are great entertainment but as for accuracy, forget about it.

I Iiked Zero but only as entertainment. It was CIA vetted and they have their own agenda.

 

[utmck]

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[Statalyzer]

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[Roger35]

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