Zero dark thirty: Go for the hunt

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton 
Rated: 8/10
Jessica Chastain has been nominated for an Oscar and is most likely to win it for showing up the grittiness of a sleuth who is trying to trace Osama Bin Laden for more than 12 years. She sports an unnerving kind of frustration, anger, depression and defeat with a mix of determination that few of her male colleagues are able to offer to their thankless job of tracking down ways and means of getting to what they call “the big man.”
Amid the fire and smoke of global terrorism, the badlands of Afghanistan and the chicanery of the ISI, a group of American snoops are shown to be quietly working on their desktops in trying to add the dots and the dashes to reach 20th centuries most elusive fugitive. In the process, they lose colleagues to suicide bombing, earn the chagrin of their seniors who want results, get misled by a global network of terror mongers and live life on the edge — all the time.
Zero Dark Thirty is no thriller in the traditional mould but it grips you with its no-nonsense, realtime quest for OBL. There is no added drama around the hunt yet you want to know more; there is not much headway all through, but you are engaged nevertheless. However, the film makes you wonder if there could have been some more to savour in the chase. However, the last 20 minutes — when the American Seals invade the big house in Abbottabad — are simply edge-of-the-seat experience.
Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 17 February, 2013

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