Movie Theater Zero Dark Thirty

Re: Zero Dark Thirty

Fuck the politicians, fuck the administration, and stop voting for these assholes. Have you seen your paycheck lately? The Military just lost 5 percent of their Housing allowance, these guys/gals are barely making ends meet. The movie’s Director should donate 10% of its sales to the Wounded Warriors Project or a scholarship for a child whose parent was KIA, since this is the theme of the movie...
The movie never thanks the Clandestine Service or the Military, and the folks in Holly Wood still are able to profit from the theme. The Movie Sucked!!!!!
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

I saw it tonight... It did leave you wanting more... I thought that the theater crowd would applaud or cheer when OBL gets it in the end... Instead, there was just silence...I liked the movie, but if you are bothered by tourture, do not watch this movie...
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Mustafa</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I'm having a hard time convincing myself to see it... A government supported, Hollywood "pat on the back" fest about killing someone. Kinda fucked up...even though the guy that got killed MORE than had it coming. </div></div>

I don't know, maybe I'm a bit too cold on the subject, but I would gladly watch a film about killing that piece of shit. Bin Laden had it coming for a long time, and I only wish that my career had put me in the position to personally deal him that death blow. Fuck him, and his legacy. I don't often celebrate death, and have already seen far too much of it, but I'd happily dance on that fucker's grave if it wasn't said to be out in the middle of an ocean somewhere.

As for the government feel-good shit, I have no interest in pretending that the current administration should get ANY credit for that raid. I always hate how politicians love to take credit for the blood, sweat, and tears of the working professionals who get the job done. I even had a pro-Obama relative brag to me about how "Obama got Bin Laden". No, Obama simply got credit. Anyway, since I haven't had the chance to see this movie yet, I can't really comment on how much they played up the government involvement in this deal.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: MD2Colo</div><div class="ubbcode-body">entertainig flick, imo

Best part was when the main intel chick was saying she doesn't care about the guys' dip and velcro and shit lol

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That part cracked me up too. "I didn't want to use you guys, I wanted to use a bomb!"
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ajb008</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I downloaded it last night, and wasn't impressed. It was exactly what I thought it was going to be. Soft core torture porn for military fetishists.



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Sorry, but the torture was not the purpose for "military fetishists." I enjoyed the film not because I get off on torture, but because factual or not it did not try to give you the message that torture is cool or warranted. It did not speak against it either. Just showed what it was probably like for some of those detainees. The overall story was not really a pat on the back for anyone, the only mention of Obama was that he was going to be burning the last people holding the bag at torture sites.

Glad to see it wasn't crediting Hollywood's anointed one with the kill. Really it wasn't a "high-five" moment for anyone, which I also liked because it just tried to portray what it might have been like to be there on the ground as a door-kicker. Heard no references to 'Merica. Last 20 make it worth seeing.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

I went and saw it last night. It was long. The first 2 hours were pretty dry, but it was interesting to see the intelligence side of it. I watched "Seal Team Six" on Netflix the night before; there wasn't much overlap except for the endings. I thought the best line of the movie was, "I'm the motherfucker who found this house!"
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

I enjoyed this movie, more documentery than a typical hollyweird movie.
This is a tribute to the community that works in the shadows,that will never be reconised for the work they are doing.

Since the details in the raid is very similar to what other sources have already exposed, I believe the motivation behind this movie was to expose the facts without judgement on how and why.

In regard to the torture scenes, give me a break!
It doesn't compare to the number of movies that show more violence and indifference to human life available in your local dvd rental store.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

Watched it tonight with the lady and really enjoyed it. Agreed on the torture, quite benign. If you thought it was bad go watch a Saw film and then come back. Anyhoo, the raid sequence was awesome as was the suspense leading up to the moment.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: JWV</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Watched it tonight with the lady and really enjoyed it. Agreed on the torture, quite benign. If you thought it was bad go watch a Saw film and then come back. Anyhoo, the raid sequence was awesome as was the suspense leading up to the moment. </div></div>

I saw it today at 5pm with my GF and we both enjoyed it. I watched the 2 part special on the .mil channel last night, coincidentally and ZDT seems to track pretty well with that presentation, but without the torture and spook stuff.

I've been listening to some of the 'troofers' on AM radio and one fellow begged his listeners to not see the film due to it being Hollywood propaganda, but I thought the scenario plausible.

Ultimately, I don't know what really happened, or how it went down, but I bet that fellow on the radio, doesn't either.

Chris
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

Saw it last night and thought it was a very good movie. It is definately worth watching if you love America. I found that it had little to do with any political alliance. I believe that they had to take a few Hollywood liberties with the story, it seemed to track with everything that I have read.

A more realistic portayal of interegation did not detract from the movie. It was less "torture" than movies like Rambo (1&2), MIA, and others.

The acting was very good and scenerios that must mimic what our agents go through were interesting.


The only question I have is: A lot of intel was collected in the raid. Where are all of the dead (or alive) terrorists that were in all of that info?
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

I watched it and I was tired at the time and fell asleep for maybe half an hour in the middle. It was pretty realistic AKA boringly slow pace of the grinding wheels of bureaucracy occupying about 2/3 to 3/4 of the flick. I didn't see any of the training the team was conducting for the raid- if that was there, I fell asleep during the boring agency part and missed that.

The raid seemed follow the format of the book account in No Easy day completely, except I believe the author mentioned after the helicopter crash he was running the wrong way prior to turning and running back to where he was supposed to be. That part I think they omitted.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

Took the wife to see a matinee yesterday of Zero Dark Thirty. Good movie. As others have said, it's really an homage to Maya who first hypothesized that following a trusted courier would be the way to get to UBL. It does give a good look at the inner workings of intelligence and defense personnel trying to succeed in their assigned roles. Pretty good movie overall.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

I hate to say it, but really not that realistic... And from the muzzle/laser sweeping I saw, again not that realistic from a military point of view. Analysts should not be put in charge of operations -so, who in real life was she supposed to be? Because I didn't get which real person she was supposed to be, either.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dogtown</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The writer said she was an amalgam of a few different people, kind of like some of the characters in "Black Hawk Down." </div></div>Gina Bennett and Jennifer Matthews, probably. But counterterrosirm investigation still doesn't work that way.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

Damn good movie. Did it portray torture? Yes. Did it condone it? Only if you choose to read that into the movie. Look torture happened and it would be a glaring omission to not show it.

The last half hour of the film was very good. I dont know if it is technically accurate but it was well done in its pacing and its procedural depiction. It's not a series of spectacular action sequences where guys are flying thru the air shooting 9 enemy combatants in the head all by themselves. Any other hollywood director would have included at least one scene where a SEAL pulls a knife and throws it at the head of a terrorist sticking him against the wall to save an unsuspecting team member and then saying something clever like "Stick around".

The last 30 minutes was far more realistic in feel than the "Real Navy SEALs" movie that came out last summer.

The majority of negative reviews I've read online are from those who found there wasnt any condemnation of torture. The other main criticism ive seen are from those who are whining about lack of character development. They wanted more feeling, more back story, more getting-to-know-you character development, more drama, more moral conflict, more political themes.
 
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We went last night. It was good, a bit slow in the middle but I didn't mind it. As stated it had some similarities and dissimilar points but in the end, its all entertainment.
 
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Downloaded the movie earlier. It's a little too long and slow going, but the last 30 minutes or so are pretty damn good. I'll wait another week or so before I download another copy because the one I got earlier wasn't all that great of quality for my standards.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

I finally saw it last night. A couple of comments.

The politics. Conservatives were concerned when they heard about this movie that it was going to be pro-Obama. They were afraid that the release date was timed to give Obama a pre-election boost. After watching the movie, I decided that, if anything, it was anti-Obama. They showed the post-9/11 tactics of the CIA as effective. More importantly, there was a scene where the administration was asking for hard evidence of UBL's location. George said, "We don't have the detainee program any more." This basically points to the administration wanting the information, but not allowing the CIA to use the tools it needed to meet those demands.

The realism. Of course, this Board is going to have a problem with any movie that shows tactics as unrealistic. Military tactics was not a focus of the movie. Y'all can lighten up on that. A better critique is that you have an analyst getting heavily involved in a military operation. Of course, they had to do this because this was Maya's story and I think the audience would feel cheated if she gets to the point where she finds the compound, coerces here bosses to launch the operation, and then the movie just cuts to CNN headlines. They wanted her opening the body bag for dramatic purposes.

Pakistani Relations. This was the part that I feel was skipped over in the movie. You could argue that the diplomatic concerns took place in another room, but there were several scenes in which they discussed the possibility of who was in that compound and nobody pointed out the international cluster f@ck that would have resulted if they went in and they were wrong. In the Bay of Pigs, we were at least invading a hostile country. That was one of the reasons that we needed the body and couldn't use the bomb. The fact seemed to be glossed over and was a primary consideration. The fact that this was glossed over again, I think leads me to see this movie as more anti-Obama. It was not an easy call. They had no positive ID on UBL and they were risking alienating the Pakistani's. It was a big deal.

The CIA. Overall, I liked this movie because I think it showed the various issues that the CIA had to deal with and how this impacted their inaction. By being wrong about WMD's, nobody would give a probability above 60% for anything. Whether it is specifically true or not, it shows how an organization can become gun shy and even paralyzed when it gets it wrong on a major decision. The specter of WMD hung over the CIA, which is why it took almost 6 months to act. I feel like this was a key theme to take away from this movie.

By the way, if Maya were my employee, I would worry about her assessments as well. She might have had single purpose, but that can lead people to skip over the truth. She was absolutely overconfident on UBL's location, and as a supervisor, that would give me pause. She did her own case a lot of harm by being single-minded.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty


Generally, movies suck, especially those made by Hollywood; what sells is what is important. Movie makers make movies to make money - not to be realistic or accurate. Accurate counting money. That's it.

Read the Esquire essay recently published about this operation. Its better than the book and the movie.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Casey Simpson</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Generally, movies suck, especially those made by Hollywood; what sells is what is important. Movie makers make movies to make money - not to be realistic or accurate. Accurate counting money. That's it.</div></div>

Yes and no. Yes, they are about making money because they are expensive gambles. ZDT had a relatively modest budget of $40 million but some summer blockbusters end up costing $200+ million and that doesn't even factor in marketing costs. If successful, yes they can bring in a lot of money, but if they bomb, that's a serious chunk of change down the drain. That's why most studios hedge their bets as much as possible, some better than others; the result of which is often why we see so many remakes and sequels lately.

As for accuracy in military films, you've just got to face the fact that it's something not everyone is good at. It cracks me up when I read the things people say here about Hollywood, it's composition and the people that work on films - it's like asking a military questions at Huffington post and seeing the responses: ignorant, but expected. The fact of the matter is that film making is a messy process that involves a lot of people working together who often don't always see eye to eye.

I came into the industry feeling like it didn't take much extra effort to "get things right" but after several years I can say that it's not as easy as you think. Often major productions will have military advisors on set but it's often not as simple as saying "this should go here, that should go there." Filmmaking is seriously dynamic, like the order of a stack as you flow through a structure - it changes several times throughout the day and many of the changes can be unforeseen. And as the production adjusts it often goes against what the advisors are saying, which creates a dilemma: can we fix this and make it more accurate or is it going to delay production and cost too much?

How productions deal with those problems often is the difference between accuracy/realism and not. And again, some put more of an emphasis on this than others and others are just better at this. And when you're the guy on set or in post-production trying to correct things, it gets very difficult to win the argument for accuracy and realism when the reality is 90% of the public won't know the difference. And then there are the directors who say, "yeah, but this way will be way cooler." Again, some are better at it than others.

Case in point, I was on the post-production for "Flags of Our Fathers" and in numerous situations VFX Supervisor Mike Owens and director Clint Eastwood both agreed to spend more time and money to correct things (within reason) to make them more accurate. For example, there's an all CG shot in the film where you're looking through the cockpit of a Corsair strafing a gun emplacement on Mt.Surabachi. The FX artist doing the rocket impacts made these extremely difficult, beautiful fluid simulations of fiery explosions that everyone loved. But I lobbied heavily for them to make it less of a Michael Bay explosion and more realistic, to which they pointed me to reference of a Corsair dropping napalm in Korea. Wrong reference! Now it broke the heart of the artist doing that effect but in the end they okayed the change and it's now why you see lots of dirt, smoke, sparks and sand bags on impact instead of a big napalm blast.

It's little victories like that that go unappreciated and often ignored. Yes, we need more of them and it's really up to the team making the film (including the studio that's bankrolling the picture) to take the effort to get it right. Some are easier than others, like in the first "Transformers" film they had PEQ-2 lasers visible in bright sunlight, coming out of the barrels of their carbines. After pointing out the obvious, it was agreed that the lasers needed to be visible because they were a key story point in the scene, but at least they moved them to the right emission point.

Chill out - some of us are working very hard to get it right and I'm sorry shit's not 100% all the time. It's not like Hollywood is full of veterans (yet).
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Carter Mayfield</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
By the way, if Maya were my employee, I would worry about her assessments as well. She might have had single purpose, but that can lead people to skip over the truth. She was absolutely overconfident on UBL's location, and as a supervisor, that would give me pause. She did her own case a lot of harm by being single-minded. </div></div>

I'm sure lots of bureaucrats in the intelligence community would agree with you.
And that would explain why it took 11 years to find OBL.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ssgp2</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Carter Mayfield</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
By the way, if Maya were my employee, I would worry about her assessments as well. She might have had single purpose, but that can lead people to skip over the truth. She was absolutely overconfident on UBL's location, and as a supervisor, that would give me pause. She did her own case a lot of harm by being single-minded. </div></div>

I'm sure lots of bureaucrats in the intelligence community would agree with you.
And that would explain why it took 11 years to find OBL. </div></div>

Hindsight's 20/20. If this were a movie about the intelligence for WMD in Iraq, you would be laughing at how dumb everyone at the CIA was.

I once worked on a cryongenic gas separation front end engineering design project for Qatar. One of the lead process design engineers was a young buck. The project required coming up with 3 separate designs, working all 3 until you get a cost estimate, then going with the cheapest design.

He had 3 designs, but two were widely available technologies and one was his baby. A technology he had designed on his own that was highly complex. They did a cost estimate and his baby lost. We weren't supposed to optimize the designs, but he spent additional hours optimizing. Now you had his optimized design versus a bunch of non-optimized design... apples and oranges. It still was more expensive.

So then he developed a new scheme of phased construction. You could to phased construction on all designs, but he only phased his baby. He did time value of money calculations, and finally, his baby was the cheapest. That was the one we pitched.

His single-mindedness cost the client a lot of money because had he put the same amount of work into the other technologies, they likely would have won out and been a lot cheaper.

Maya was emotionally invested in this thing. Because she turned out to be right, she looked like a genius. And if she wasn't? She even admitted at one point she thought that courier was still alive because she wanted it to be true.

As a supervisor, I have to take those factors into consideration in evaluating here conclusions.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Dogtown</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Case in point, I was on the post-production for "Flags of Our Fathers" and in numerous situations VFX Supervisor Mike Owens and director Clint Eastwood both agreed to spend more time and money to correct things (within reason) to make them more accurate. For example, there's an all CG shot in the film where you're looking through the cockpit of a Corsair strafing a gun emplacement on Mt.Surabachi. The FX artist doing the rocket impacts made these extremely difficult, beautiful fluid simulations of fiery explosions that everyone loved. But I lobbied heavily for them to make it less of a Michael Bay explosion and more realistic, to which they pointed me to reference of a Corsair dropping napalm in Korea. Wrong reference! Now it broke the heart of the artist doing that effect but in the end they okayed the change and it's now why you see lots of dirt, smoke, sparks and sand bags on impact instead of a big napalm blast.
</div></div>

At the end of the day, movies are generally about larger themes. I am more concerned about the larger themes than getting the minutiae right.

And as you point out, sometimes there is an overriding artistic design that says you need to get this detail wrong in order for the scene to work. Imagine the dog fight at the end of Star Wars where the explosions and lasers made no sound. They wouldn't make a sound, because the fight is occurring in a vacuum, but the scenes just wouldn't work being realistic.

Of course, CGI has created audiences that are really jaded. It is difficult in this day and age to wow today's audience with special effects the way that audiences were wowed from, say Star Wars to, say Jurassic Park.
 
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Indeed, complete realism would be no fun in "Star Wars", so it becomes a story point that helps convey what's happening. That's specifically why you see bright flashes from flash suppressors all the time in TV and film. And going back to "Flags", there are a conscious effort to place the impression of bullets zipping through the air - not tracers, mind you - bullets. Go back and watch those battle scenes and you'll see these greyish shapes streak by as they fire and maneuver. No, it's not realistic at all, but it was placed in there as a story point to convey the danger and intensity.

As for now being able to wow people anymore, there's just a faster pace of innovation than there was in the 70s-80s. We going through major paradigm shifts in CGI production every couple years now, not decades. We can do stuff now that just wasn't possible 10 years ago and in some cases even 5 years ago. Visual Effects have become the new movie stars, being a key component of 95% of the highest grossing films in history.

http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross

Unfortunately we're getting crushed by the movie studios in the process.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Carter Mayfield</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
ssgp2 said:
Carter Mayfield said:
Maya was emotionally invested in this thing. Because she turned out to be right, she looked like a genius. And if she wasn't? She even admitted at one point she thought that courier was still alive because she wanted it to be true.

As a supervisor, I have to take those factors into consideration in evaluating here conclusions. </div></div>

So you're basing your assumptions of Maya personality on the movie director presentation?

All I see in Maya's character is a dedication to do the job and using limited resources to achieve it.

The rest is purely speculative.

In regards to WMD, it was in my opinion, strong political desire to find justification to put booth on the Irak soil.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: ssgp2</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
So you're basing your assumptions of Maya personality on the movie director presentation?

All I see in Maya's character is a dedication to do the job and using limited resources to achieve it.
</div></div>

Ummm... yes. Because Maya isn't a real person. She is based on a real person or multiple real people. This is not a documentary, it is historical fiction. So yes, I am basing my opinion of a movie character on her actions in the movie.
 
Re: Zero Dark Thirty

Saw this movie today at a matinee and highly recommend it. The acting is across the board good (my favorite character was Dan, the first interrogator we meet), the story interesting, and I thought well paced. Interesting that this and Argo come out about the same time. Whether super true to life or not, both movies show the CIA as not filled with some sort of Jack Ryan super spooks, but as Americans that care about their country--something I appreciated.
 
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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Shorthairs</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I saw Act of Valor and would only give it a 3.5 or of 5. Thought this might be the same but what the heck. </div></div>

A lot of people here loved Act of Valor for its realistic depiction of tactics. I would give it a 2.5 or 3 out of 5. I didn't hate it, but it didn't really make me think. It had villains. They were two dimensional. It shows I put the minutiae and action low on my priority list.

Zero Dark Thirty was, to me, a lot better movie. Better acting. Characters were fleshed out a little better. And even the bad guys in ZDT... when they were getting killed in front of their wives and children, I felt something for their kids. Your father commits one of the most infamous mass murders in history, but still it is painful to watch him get shot in front of you. And then the SEALS who were stuck having to comfort these kids, saying "it's ok... it's ok..." and making sure the kids don't go into the room with their dead parents.

There is a whole lot more complexity in war and I think Kathryn Bigelow does a good job of bringing that out. I thought she did an excellent job of bringing that out in the Hurt Locker, which a lot of people here hated for its unrealistic tactics. There was that scene where a cab driver is driving through an area with a bomb and Jeremy Renner's character has a standoff with the cab driver. The movie starts with the main character getting killed by a store owner with a mobile phone, so you know this guy could be a cab driver in the wrong place and the wrong time, or he could be a terrorist trying to set off an IED. Jeremy Renner shoots his windshield, shoots off to the side trying to get the cab driver to get out of there. He doesn't speak Arabic. The cab driver doesn't speak English, and they are trying to figure out what the hell to do.

If I'm that cab driver, would I get the hell out of there? Would I be pissed that some dude from another country just shot my windshield? Would I be too paralyzed to move? These are the things going through my mind and these are the things going through the solider's mind as he tries to figure out if this is a friend or foe.

I don't know how realistic the scene is, but I do know the depiction of very large political forces putting two people into conflict with one another is very realistic as a theme and that is what makes the scene powerful to me. For some people, if the hammer wasn't cocked back or if he was carrying a Browning Hi Power or some other non-standard issue weapon, the scene would be stupid, but I don't really focus on that stuff. I may notice it, but I am focused on the big picture.

BTW... this also means that if you like bang bang shoot 'em ups a lot, you shouldn't care whether I liked this movie or not.
 
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I saw Zero Dark Thirty and loved it. It is a movie that takes its time to tell the story, so if you are expecting Transformers or Independence Day, this is not the movie for you. For those of you who are thinking it is a BHO lovefest-it's not. It is made perfectly clear that this is going on during the reign of BHO, and that enhanced interrogation techniques were used during that time.

Initially, I had written the movie off as a liberal BHO praising propaganda piece, until a friend of mine who comes from that world and was actually on the ground involved with that type of work, wrote a short review. In it, he said he liked the movie and also offered some other references that one could read to gain some additional insight and see the matter from different perspectives.

Yeah, we all know how it ended, but the director presents it in a very suspenseful manner and keeps you engaged. I learned things in the movie that I did not know, and I saw how a bunch of separate events that I had read about were all part of a much bigger picture.

Watch it sometime. If anything, it's good entertainment. And any movie that pisses off liberals by pointing out how BHO is a hypocrite because he capitalized on the death of UBL from info gained by waterboarding, is good by me!

Here's my buddy's review:
Zero Dark Thirty is excellent. Limited, as any short movie must be. But I'm glad Bigelow told this story, the story of "Maya" the CIA analyst. She was the right person to tell the story. And the analyst is one of the most important human sides of the story, I think. There are other sides to the story, however. Mark Bowden's "The Finish" tells the top down story. Mark Owen's "No Easy Day" tells the assaulter's decade long story. But Bigelow's movie is really well done. Interesting reaction from the American audience that I saw it with. Complete silence. Serious movie. Serious reaction. I'll be interested to hear what other folks think of it.
 
Caught up with this film last week - its been playing for a while here in Australia.

I had head a lot of reports that the movie was anti torture or pro Obama etc etc. Well, from a fairly middle of the road Australian view it was not really pro or anti either torture or Obama from what I saw.

What I think it did portray was the fairly intense persistence of Maya - if she exists in real life she must be quite a character. I'd like to have lunch with her !

I thought the raid scenes were done well. There must have been some extremely high heart rates & dry mouths on that trip. Can you imagine what it would be like to be on a job as big as that ?

Anyway - a good film, I didn't pick up on too much politics in it, if anything I think it was a bit the other way.

Surprised to see so many Australian actors in it though............
 
The raid scenes were 'hollywood'. Have you ever seen that much sweeping and talking during an op?

Agreed. As for the Aussi actors, this is par for the course. Look at important military films of recent years like "Black Hawk Down" or "Band of Brothers" and you'll see lots of Brits and Aussies playing Americans. At least an American actor didn't play Max in the new "Mad Max" film, right? ;)
 
It was good, but not great. Reminded me of 'The Hurt Locker' (surprise...) which - inexplicably - won the Oscar for Best Picture.

Just goes to show, in this pop culture world, being topical is half the battle.
 
In case anyone's curious how they did the choppers in the raid sequence...

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/lights-out-making-zero-dark-thirty/

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