I've admired Jessica Chastaine since her emotionally delicate performance as the housewife in "The Tree Of Life" -but she looks small and fragile any way so it felt like typecasting. Apparently not, in Katherine Bigelow's espionage procedural about the decade long hunt and assassination of the 9-11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden by the USA, Jessica's CIA Analyst Maya is a singleminded hard as nails bent on tracking down the man since she graduated from High School.
Maya has no personal life and the role demands that Jessica reveal only on thing: she really wants Jessica dead. Jessica acts with her eyes, which are like darts, and her chin, like it belongs to John Wayne. It isn't moral indignation but tunnel vision. Not right or wrong but us or them. And it carries the movie which is so deeply involved in the nuts and bolts, with the exception of a handful of very thrilling set scenes and of course, the attack on Obama's home, it is a study of how it was done.
And with the first lead to capturing Obama brought through torture, it is considered a morally ambiguous story.
AND when you are in it, "Zero Dark Thirty" (aka 1230am -the time of the NAVY Seals operation to get bin Laden) it feels true to life, the payoffs in Kuwait and the Black Zones where prisoners are hidden, all ring true. But they really aren't. It is one thing to watch CIA Operative Dan waterboarding a prisoner. It would be something entirely different to watch Dan cutting off his fingers.
Also, the most important character in the movie is a composite figure and the more you think about that, the less she rings true. The scene when she tells the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, "I'm the mother fucker who find him" is just pathetic. I don't believe it and it is a black swan. If that's not true then the stories foundations begins to flounder.
Musically: Alexandre Desplat's score is pretty good, never used to enhance our feelings but to play on our nerves. No real music otherwise except for a blast of metal, juxtaposed against Islam calls to prayer, and the torturing of a suspect.
Movie: B+
Music: B