Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty, or how I will call it from this point on-Zero Wow Thirty!  This film was solid in all ways, shapes and forms, which is especially incredible due to the fact that it is based on the real life accounts.  Granted, I'm a sucker for military anything, and despite what this film's trailer depicts, Zero Dark Thirty spends about 30 minutes of its entirety focusing on the fast paced aim and shoot tactics of Seal Team 6.  The majority of this film follows one character: CIA agent Maya.

Maya is the agent who spent her first 12 plus years at the agency pooling together leads from all angles to track down Osama bin Laden's courier.  She gathered this information from testimonials, family history, phone calls, etc.  She spent countless hours to years looking through cold case files, and obsolete forms; in the end Maya not only found the courier but bin Laden himself.  The film follows her emotional roller coaster as leads dry up, and new ones spring forth.  The film was a little slow throughout, but was intended in that aspect.

Kathryn Bigelow (Academy Award winning director of The Hurt Locker) uses the slower tempo to feed the viewer heaps of information; the viewer feels the pain and anguish Maya feels throughout the film.  I'm not going to go on a limb and say I was in suspense the whole film, however looking back, the experience left me more uneasy then calm.  As is expected with any and all encounters with terrorism, this film kept the audience and myself especially jumpy in its many suspenseful sequences.  When Maya finally gets her "green light" to raid the compound she traced the courier and bin Laden to, one can not help but feel the butterflies and anxiousness Maya and the Seals must have felt when the helicopters were taking off and the mission was a go.

Kathryn Bigelow did not disappoint in any facet of this film.  She did a remarkable job weaving this story so that each viewer felt a specific emotion when required and then want to jump for joy when the credits rolled.  This film was very detail oriented from start to finish, including very graphic images of the Seals take downs.  I do not suggest this film for viewers who are squeamish to such sequences of graphic violence and gore.  However, I feel that this film should be a requirement for all to view so as to never forget what unknown Americans do every day so that we can be safe and blind to the dangers lurking throughout the world.

Final words: Extra-Large Popcorn, GO SEE THIS FILM!!!

Parents - not a movie to bring the children to.  I was very surprised myself to hear the cries of children in the theater, I had to disconnect myself from the movie to realize that the cries were not from the film, but from the audience members themselves.

Review Rating : Based on popcorn sizes; small, medium, large, extra-large
                           When films get a snore zzz... worth skipping