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Post by canuckcutie on Jan 30, 2013 21:14:18 GMT -4
I thought Mya was shown to be a pretty arrogant character - verbally abusing and threatening her superiors, stomping around then she didn't get her way etc.
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Post by SweetOblivion on Feb 6, 2013 19:44:18 GMT -4
I thought Mya was shown to be a pretty arrogant character - verbally abusing and threatening her superiors, stomping around then she didn't get her way etc. She was upset because they weren't taking her seriously. She turned out to be right, didn't she?
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Nov 24, 2024 15:34:12 GMT -4
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2013 4:44:16 GMT -4
I just saw this movie and it makes no sense. A woman recruited fresh out of high school by the CIA is assigned to a high-level case like tracking Bin Laden and spends 10 years chasing a single thread that leads to his killing? Really? She somehow has the analyitical skills, linguistic skills, data analysis skills, to do all this? They figure out Bin Laden is in the house because if there are three females there must be three males? Really, how many wives is a Muslim allowed to have? Yup. That's right, one dude could have been married to all three. This movie's an ok movie but I'm betting not even close to reality. They left out a lot of things in the movie but they didn't figure out before hand that Bin Laden was in the house. The SEALs go in knowing that there's a chance they've got the wrong guy. Basically, they were willing to kill whoever was there on the chance that it was him. When they finally send out the photo of the dead man on the third floor, everyone's tense waiting for a proper ID, remember? The CIA actually does recruit out of high school. There's a lot of intelligence work that is boring, grinding desk work that doesn't require a doctorate from Harvard. Obviously, there are some major academic and military achievers in intelligence (the character of Dan had a PhD) but the agency will often take young people and send them to college or in-house training to get the specific skills they need. Her character had no family mentioned, no social life, no other attachments than her job. That would probably be more beneficial than not. I finally saw the movie yesterday and thought it was great, a better overall film achievement than "Hurt Locker". Bigelow did a great job of wringing real surprises out of history. I remember all those terrorist attacks but still jumped out of my seat every time something blew up. I started crying when the double decker bus rolled through London.
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Millis
Blueblood
Posts: 1,144
Mar 9, 2005 10:42:27 GMT -4
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Post by Millis on Feb 17, 2013 8:41:41 GMT -4
I watched this last night and went into it not knowing anything about the torture controversy. I have to say, I do think it gives a lot of credit to the value of torture. Beyond the initial torture scenes, later in the movie they want to question a detainee and are lamenting the fact that their hands have been tied as far as how they can question him. I think it did show that the torture has a negative affect on the perpetrators, so I guess that's something. It seems like they bumped up the importance of torture for dramatic purposes, and I guess I feel like this story is dramatic enough without that.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Nov 24, 2024 15:34:12 GMT -4
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Post by Deleted on Feb 17, 2013 13:45:48 GMT -4
I watched this last night and went into it not knowing anything about the torture controversy. I have to say, I do think it gives a lot of credit to the value of torture. I thought the opposite. Dan appears to have been torturing a lot of people for a long time and gets pretty much nowhere. The detainee on the boat, who seemed to have been worked over, gives them the name of the Jordanian doctor and that didn't end well. Dan's torture victim finally gives the name of Abu Ahmed but only after they stop torturing him and even then everyone but Mya thinks AA's a dead end. It's one underling that finally bothers to go hunt for a file on him. Mya's insistent that torture doesn't work and bribes don't work and she's proven right. They finally get Bin Ladin using regular detective work: tracking paperwork, trailing suspects, watching the highway, triangulating cell phone signals. Even when they do find the safe house, torture advocate Dan is hesitant and thinks there's only a small chance Bin Ladin's in there, so he's shown to be not nearly the badass that his earlier scenes suggest. At that later point in the movie where some CIA are frustrated by not being able to torture, I felt that was there to show what Mya was up against, a bunch of old dogs who wouldn't learn new tricks.
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Post by GoldenFleece on Feb 17, 2013 19:46:52 GMT -4
Most people who think torture is justifiable aren't going to stop feeling that way just because they aren't allowed to do it anymore, so I didn't have an issue with portraying some members of the CIA with that attitude. Does that mean it was right attitude to have? IMO, definitely not. If the script had inserted a character who said, "If only we hadn't spent so many years torturing suspects, we might have found bin Laden a lot earlier!" then I guess that would have quelled the torture controversy, but that would've been clunky and critics would have slammed Bigelow for being too obvious. I think you can't make this movie and not portray that "enhanced interrogations" were a real part of the hunt for Osama. But I do think it was made clear that the hunt became a lot more effective once the CIA moved away from torture as its primary source of intelligence gathering.
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Post by FiggyPudding on Feb 26, 2013 1:02:03 GMT -4
I found this really engrossing. Jason Clarke's character was more interesting than Mya.
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Post by bklynred on Feb 27, 2013 21:16:43 GMT -4
The CIA actually does recruit out of high school. There's a lot of intelligence work that is boring, grinding desk work that doesn't require a doctorate from Harvard. Obviously, there are some major academic and military achievers in intelligence (the character of Dan had a PhD) but the agency will often take young people and send them to college or in-house training to get the specific skills they need. Her character had no family mentioned, no social life, no other attachments than her job. That would probably be more beneficial than not. I finally saw the movie yesterday and thought it was great, a better overall film achievement than "Hurt Locker". Bigelow did a great job of wringing real surprises out of history. I remember all those terrorist attacks but still jumped out of my seat every time something blew up. I started crying when the double decker bus rolled through London. I agree, I thought this was a lot better than The Hurt Locker, which didn't hold up for me on 2nd viewing, though I've seen ZDT twice & was spooked both times. Also, besides h.s., when I was a sophomore in college, it was whispered among a few friends that the CIA was on campus and had interviewed a few people.
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Nov 24, 2024 15:34:12 GMT -4
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2013 9:11:52 GMT -4
I found this movie more interesting that Argo.
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jynni
Sloane Ranger
Play?
Posts: 2,313
Mar 21, 2005 11:05:04 GMT -4
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Post by jynni on Mar 24, 2013 1:17:44 GMT -4
Yeah, I just watched this back to back with Argo and found it to be a much stronger film overall. I also think Jessica Chastain gave a much stronger performance than Jennifer Lawrence, who I love and thought was very good in SLP but not Best Actress worthy. I actually think Jessica Chastain could've played that role in SLP just as well, if not better.
As for the torture controversy, I felt the movie presented a very matter of fact, even neutral depiction. It was like this is what they did and this is the information that the US gleaned from it. Whether or not the torture was justified or worth it is really up to the viewer to filter.
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