Zero Dark Thirty

[lea1977]

Just finished I watching this film, found the raid scene very tense. Overall good movie.

[Ladybug]

We watched it over the weekend, and I didn't really get into it until the second half. The raid on the compound was an amazing sequence and made up for all the slow parts of the movie. I like how the audience is just dumped into the deep end and not coddled at all.

As for the torture stuff, I was ashamed watching it. I didn't think the movie glorified it, it showed how brutal "enhanced interrogation" really is, but it did eventually result in some info. The guy tortured in the first act was mentally and emotionally broken by the time he gave up the name of the courier. If they hadn't put him through all of that he may never have given up the name. So on that count, it was effective.

Wanted to add: As for the Argo comparison, these two movies are totally different in tone and I think the filmmakers are coming from different perspectives. Affleck obviously wanted to make this little story within a big story entertaining for the audience, while Bigelow approached her subject with an almost documentary-like realism. There were a couple of laughs in ZDT, but the filmmakers didn't seem to care if you were entertained. They wanted the story told, and they wanted you to watch it. I liked the film, but at times it felt like a homework assignment. Argo was meant to be a typical Hollywood crowd-pleasing thriller. They both worked, but they are completely different animals.

[wilbert]

yep, tell me again how this is a legit movie

[Deleted]

May 6, 2013 22:31:35 GMT -4 wilbert said:

yep, tell me again how this is a legit movie

Legit, meaning it is a movie? It's legit.

That article isn't damning in any way and the writer seems he has a massive axe to grind. In summary, the CIA reviewed the script. That was public knowledge when the movie was first announced, that the screenwriter was working with the cooperation of the CIA. The first supposedly shocking fact is that the CIA claimed the Mya-equivalent didn't participate in the actual torture and the writer changed it. The CIA said they didn't use dogs to intimidate prisoners... but dogs were used by the Army at Abu Ghraib... and so the writer taking the dog out of the CIA scene was wrong, somehow? Then a party scene where a CIA member drunkenly fires an AK during a party was objected to because that's against agency policy. Removing it is wrong because... Blackwater? Then the CIA objected to depictions of interrogation videos but the writer kept them in because they were factual and cinematically compelling. The Gawker writer says the CIA didn't request that these scenes be removed. Wait, I thought he was in a snit because the CIA was censoring the script? What is his beef, exactly? It's not like the movie shows the agency in a glorious halo of awesomeness. Various members waterboard, torture, obfuscate, hesitate, and fuck up pretty much up to the end.

[wilbert]

You raise some valid points, dguzpy. I maintain that a movie that was vetted and approved by the CIA holds claims to authenticity much like The West Wing depicted politics; the narrative force of story telling coupled with a political agenda drives a specific version of interpretation of fact. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

[Deleted]

To me, there's a difference between vetting the story for factual accuracy (with the screenwriter freely choosing whether or not to make changes) and censoring/whitewashing the story. The article seems to want to prove the latter but only describes the former.