Zero Dark Thirty
rootlesscosmo
12,848 Posts
Is there a thread on this yet?
It was aight; not amazing. It absolutely shows torture as having been instrumental in locating bin Laden. So the idea that it's "ambiguous" or whatever on this point is bullshit.
It's funny; when we killed Osama, I posted on FB the very next day that Richard Edson should play him in the movie...only to have his doppleganger (Fares Fares) star in the eventual movie...but not as Osama.
I still say Edson looks strikingly like UBL...but not as much as Fares Fares does....perhaps Fares Fares should play Edson in the eventual biopic...*postmodern*
It was aight; not amazing. It absolutely shows torture as having been instrumental in locating bin Laden. So the idea that it's "ambiguous" or whatever on this point is bullshit.
It's funny; when we killed Osama, I posted on FB the very next day that Richard Edson should play him in the movie...only to have his doppleganger (Fares Fares) star in the eventual movie...but not as Osama.
I still say Edson looks strikingly like UBL...but not as much as Fares Fares does....perhaps Fares Fares should play Edson in the eventual biopic...*postmodern*
Comments
**SPOILER ALERT**
Osama gets merked.
And the single-minded, dedicated public servant whose life revolves around his capture is left feeling empty.
Kind of a trope, really. Like the dude in Hurt Locker who couldn't hang with living as a normal civilian after all those months in Iraq; he was only "whole" when killing bad guys or whatever. Eyes were rolled for sure.
This dude was in it; I'm a fan:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0835016/
Homeland and Zero Dark are aimed at Arabs, Argo at Iranians. So I guess there's that.
speaking of Homeland, the main character in the bin Laden movie was basically a less nuanced version of Claire Danes's character; I'm obviously not breaking ground with that parallel, but it was pretty striking to me (I guess having been watching a lot of Homleand lately).
Argo makes some limited attempts at placing the revolution in context, though there aren't really any sympathetic Iranian characters as far as I can remember.
The Zero Dark movie purports to rely on some secret sources; hard to really separate fact from fiction because so much of that stuff is classified; as a result I wasn't really sure how to properly evaluate the movie.
I found it interesting that Gandolfini was credited as "CIA Director" rather than as Leon Panetta. He was good (he always is) but there wasn't much of him.
(what is though?)
when the SEALS guys are tossing the pigskin around,
i was really hoping for a sand football game,
but no dice.
i liked it better than django, but django will def age better.
(when's the last time you pulled out Hurt Locker to watch again?
me neither.)
Didnt the Ambassador's maid keep her mouf shut when they came to the house to ask questions.
Less nuanced that Clare Dane's character? Was there steam coming out of her ears and some free in the CD changer?
ah yeah I forgot that.
so Affleck made a point to check that box after all.
yeah, less nuanced. Like, Chastain was a single-minded, obsessive, driven female with no capacity for making a human connection....and Claire Danes is a single-minded, obsessive, driven female with a limited capacity for making a human connection who's bi-polar!
How so? I imagine what happened for real was much, much worse. We got the Disney version.
yeah, less nuanced. Like, Chastain was a single-minded, obsessive, driven female with no capacity for making a human connection....and Claire Danes is a single-minded, obsessive, driven female with a limited capacity for making a human connection who's bi-polar!
I watched Chastain's interview/appearance on the John Stewart Show and evidently her character in the movie based upon a single, actual person, not a composite. Chastain did not meet her (the CIA operative she played is still undercover) but other CIA sources say the woman in question would call people on their shit and has been passed over for promotion. One of her colleges said if you cannot get a promotion after finding UBL, what does get you a promotion in the CIA.
while the film was mildly entertaining, it left me with an awful taste in my mouth.
i also found the torture parts (enhanced interrogation is a euphemism) extremely unsettling and upsetting. that shit was pure evil going down, i wonder if we will ever know the extent of it. how many people died from that torture? the lead actreses line that the torture vicitm can help himself by being honest is beyond the pale, any person with an ounce of integrity or humanity would have been out of there in a flash. also, the depiction as torture being difficult on the torturers themselves is kind of perverse.
i think that movie is defintiley pro-torture. the link to the courier is supposedly only found out after marathon torture sessions that reduces the subject to animalisitc level. there are also a few throw away lines about obama administration hamstringing the terror investigations by giving detainees habeas corpus rights.
lol how so? wasn't it pretty much ineffective?
Obviously there are inherent flaws in extracting information from suspects with torture as people will most likely say anything to make it stop whether it's the truth or not.
All in all, very well done.