User Reviews

This is a solid action thriller based on a significant real-life story. The cinematography is top-notch and the locations feel very authentic. While the first hour and a half is quite slow and feels like a procedural, the final 40 minutes are absolutely incredible and brutal. The realism of the ending raid is the highlight of the film. However, I found the lead performance a bit distracting, as the expressions often felt off and took me out of the moment. Overall, it is a good experience for the technical mastery of the final act, but it requires some patience.

A gripping thriller about looking for a needle in a haystack (and the toll it takes on you). Yes the main character is an amalgam of people, a movie needs a single protagonist! Yes they show torture but it'd be worse to pretend it didn't happen. (And FWIW they don't get good intel from torture, the key info comes when they stop torturing.) I read the movie as saying the torturers are flawed people, but YMMV. Anyway to me it's a gripping movie about solving an impossible puzzle, with thorny ethical and moral issues in there for you to consider. Loved it.

A decent enough film, though over-rated in my opinion. Too much like US propaganda for my liking. That said, some good acting, and worth a watch!

This (slightly) fictionalized dramatization of the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden is often difficult to watch, for a variety of reasons, but that doesn't mean it isn't any good. It's just not your typically polished, glistening Hollywood rendition, and that takes some getting used to. Flubbed lines are left in the final cut, humanizing the cast. Quiet, unsuspecting character moments are interrupted by sudden explosions of violence, effectively mimicking (or so I have to imagine) the bloodrush of a real-world terrorist assault. The methods of torture employed in America's hunt for the Al-Qaeda leader are clearly depicted, as are the mixed spoils of their occasional success. The first act points a firehose of information at the audience, leaving them just as overwhelmed and buried by minutiae as the lead. Jessica Chastain is fiery and confident in that role, essential traits for the complicated character she portrays, but the rest of the supporting cast fades into the wallpaper whenever she's around. The actual attack on Bin-Laden's compound, which eats up the last hour of the film, is the smoothest and most accessible scene by a longshot, remaining factual and lifelike while also ratcheting up the pace and the tension. As a whole, the film is well-acted and effective, but often slow and over-inflated. Though it paints just one side of the story, it refrains from drawing any final conclusions and instead leaves the viewer to deal with the validity of America's motives and methods.

Pseudo history, the whole bin laden thing was blown out of proportion, this is the story according to Hollywood.

Wow. Caught me by surprise. This is a fascinating true story. After the events of 9/11 Osama bin Laden became the most wanted man on the planet, not only in the United States as well. The War on Terror has just begun and the viewer follows a woman working for the CIA, Maya. We follow Maya through over ten years of research and intelligence bouts all with the aim of killing one man. This was so much different than what I thought it was going to be. To which I was pleasantly surprised. I believed this was going to be a war flick, where we follow the seals most of the time, but instead, we were given a story riddled with a great script and brilliant acting. The cinematography is centered around creating tension, stress, and anxiety. As the people in the story often were. The movie was tactile, you felt angry and tense as the job grew harder and it became harder to track this guy down. The film gets the idea completely right, they didn't just want to show you the Seal team that kills him in the end, they wanted to show you all it took to get that Seal team there, while still giving them the looks they deserve.

For me, a great thriller based on a true story. I enjoyed it and found it quite suspenseful, but the main thing comes at the end of the last 20 minutes or so. Until then, it's kind of a whodunit that probably won't entertain everyone unless you're downright interested in the subject matter. I was hooked and as I said the last few moments of the film were great. A great movie that I would recommend to fans of the terrorist theme.

Un film d’une grande sobriété sur un sujet délicat nonobstant ces quelques mots « Géronimo ! pour Dieu et la Patrie » à la fin… Sachant que tous ces « problèmes » (le mot est faible !) découlent toujours (comme d’habitude) de la religion et de certaines personnes qui font et ont fait l’impensable en son nom, je trouve cela assez mal venu. Mais s’il faut choisir un camp, alors bien entendu puisqu’il s’agit d’une guerre qui durera bien 100 ans, je crierai « Pour la Chrétienté, à fond pour la victoire et la gloire de nos armes », bien sûr. Enfin, surtout les armes américaines, puisque nous, en France ou en Europe, on n’en a pas. Ou alors juste une semaine de munitions. Et encore. Toujours est-il que le film ne verse ni dans le triomphalisme ni dans le pathos (ou si peu). C’est très documenté sans jamais être chiant. Les acteurs et les actrices sont excellents, la belle Jessica en tête. Certes, ce n’est pas toujours très clair mais on s’y retrouve tout de même dans cette traque de l’ignoble salopard islamo-terroriste. Bigelow après Démineurs démontre qu’elle n’a pas perdu la main : une belle maîtrise ici !

The biggest problem is no only the extremely unsympathetic Maya, but also the ugly Jessica Chastain, who is acting her. And if the main charakter doesnt work, the movie has a problem. Anything else? Yes, the movie is a big US propaganda. They even show, that torture people is not a bad thing. Welcome to the middle ages. Is there anything good? I liked to see so much of Pakistan and Afghanistan and not USA again. It was interesting to see the administration fights in the background. And the finale with the assault of the house was great.

Honestly, a decent film by several standards. Content, acting, set design, pace and sequence of the film were all highlights. That being said,I won't of the writing or script itself is what's lacking. There are no characters to deeply connect or identify with and though there are some big names actors, their lines could have been delivered by seemingly any other talented actor. The introduction of the film is quite brutal and perhaps rightfully so if that was to show a point of the lengths personnel at a US government agency were willing to go to obtain information. The film's climax is the actual operation or mission to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. This film keeps you on the edge but especially as it builds to this climactic ending. It is worth a watch if just for the historical context, but I almost wish someone would remake this story.

nice film to watch with all family and the final was really really nice i recomend It for everybody

The talented cast is buried under a mess of a script that fails to tell a coherent story.

Ok movie, but wasn't all that interesting, at least for me. Wouldn't watch it a second time.

An unrelenting tense military thriller revolving around the search for Osama Bin Laden. It focuses on Cia agent Maya who is willing to do whatever to find Bin Laden resorts to progressively cruel means to do so. The movie has been rightfully critiqued for it's pro - torture propaganda and bias patriotism. This movie is above average in cinematography, script and pacing but it's not great. In fact it plays it incredibly safe and feels like a really long but good episode of homeland.

Realistic, cool, and in command of the environment, parts of Zero Dark Thirty may make you snooze a little, but the representation of the conflict and capturing of the action will undoubtedly take your breath away.

Zero Dark Thirty is precise, definitive filmmaking, yet Bigelow refuses to hand over easy answers. Some people call that evasion. I call it the ultimate despair.

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A masterfully shot slow paced movie that explores step by step all the journey that brought to Osama Bin Laden capture and death concentrating both on the CIA work and US army mission. It's a patient and long exploration of the whole process that may be not everybody's cup of tea but objectively a good movie.

Zero Dark Thirty is one good movie that shows effort of one woman that tries to capture Osama Bin Laden together with her collegues and teammates. Story here for me was rather ok and even though some pacing was maybe tiny bit slow in second act , I still didnt mind that to much. Characters were solid even if we didnt found out nothing about them but that was somewhat expecting for my side. So this film is one solid work about a big mission and final goal.

One 2012's best movies. A brilliant, unnerving and tension filled telling of the biggest man hunt ever. Must see.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Absolutely excellent film. The anticipation for what you ultimately know will happen but watch the process build and build with the characters makes this film one for the ages.

While the writing can leave quite a bit to be desired (especially during the first half), the film mostly makes up for it with a much stronger second half, an excellent climactic sequence and a consistently strong performance from Jessica Chastain.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

To be honest, I was initially **** into this movie because the trailer I saw was gunfire and explosions and I'm a **** for actions movies like that. When I ended up watching it, it was just an American propaganda movie with a lot of talking and arguing and other BS. All the gunfire happened pretty much at the end and it was so short. Also, Jessica Chastain is so freaking unbearable in this movie.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Had this film been about hunting down anyone besides Osama bin Laden it would have been unbearably dull, not because it's lacking in action, but because it's lacking, period. It relies entirely on the viewer's emotional response to the events of 9/11 and frankly I would rather have watched a one-hour documentary than a "dramatization" with a runtime on the long side of two and a half hours. Things that irked me: The CIA station chief in Kabul isn't identified as the station chief till the film is halfway over. A bomb goes off in a hotel and I expected a bomb to go off because it was the only time I'd seen the main character, Maya, sitting down in a hotel restaurant. Another bomb goes off at a US base and I predicted that too because another CIA person insisted that the guy entering the base not be checked at the gate (and Maya wasn't present to suffer the effects of a bomb blast). The only time we see Maya leave the US Embassy by herself there's a car waiting right outside the "back gate" (or whatever) and it's full of guys waiting to blast her with automatic rifles. And then yet another CIA guy who is never really identified walks into a room full of CIA people and chews them out for failing to find bin Laden up till that point in the movie. I suppose that if I forced myself to choose one main problem with the film it would have to be the lack of interesting characters. Maya is an analyst, apparently, and she's determined to see bin Laden hunted down and killed. And that's what happens. The end. Also, there's a severe lack of story. Our heroes interrogate all kinds of people and then the critical step comes to light when some CIA person, never actually named, goes through "all the files" very carefully and discovers some guy they thought dead might actually be alive and so they hunt him down and, surprise, he leads them to bin Laden, or at least the house where they think bin Laden might be occupying. Yes, we see lots of computers, lots of satellite images, and lots of stuff about how phone calls can be traced across the globe. Yes, we spend some time in the streets trying to track down some courier guy talking on his cell phone. Yes, we eventually end up in the compound where yet another helicopter on a critical mission malfunctions and crashes. But none of it makes for movie gold. And ultimately there's no definite proof that bin Laden is hiding out where they think he is hiding out. It's chains of logic. It's "well this guy wouldn't be doing that unless X, Y, and Z, and therefore it's got bin Laden's face all over it." If you're interested in the bin Laden saga check out some documentaries and leave this turkey alone.

The merit about this picture is the same as "Social Network" and "Chernobyl": its rawness and anti-romantic way of telling a real story.

Very good but very specific movie. it's not easy watch, almost like a documentary. Intense scenes, very realistic portrayal from what I understand. Not your typical shooty-shooty.

As if they worked 10 years to catch one guy with whom they were already working with, that's a joke =)).

PROS: impressive production; absorbing camera work and action; highly invested acting of a determined and intense female CIA field officer; fitting soundtrack; well paced and intelligent storytelling of a decade-long pursuit. CONS: portrays CIA officers as "heroes" trying to defeat the "bad guys"; makes a disturbing and misleading link between using torture and obtaining needed and reliable information, falsely implying that torture can be justified as an effective form of intelligence gathering; the statement “based on first-hand accounts of actual events” is deceptive because it leads viewers to believe the story is accurate and that the information obtained during or after the use of torture played a critical role in locating UBL, when that's not the case*. *In January of 2013, senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin sent a letter to Acting CIA Director Michael Morell explaining that after a review of more than six million pages of CIA records, they made the following determination: "The CIA did not first learn about the existence of the Usama Bin Laden courier from CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques. Nor did the CIA discover the courier's identity from detainees subjected to coercive techniques. No detainee reported on the courier’s full name or specific whereabouts, and no detainee identified the compound in which Usama Bin Laden was hidden. Instead, the CIA learned of the existence of the courier, his true name and location through means unrelated to the CIA detention and interrogation program."

Nothing about this movie warrants anything over a 7/10. Acting is OK, but the 95 critics rating is more out of fear of being called a terrorist supporter or simply being labelled non-patriotic. It's a hunt, black sites, waterboarding all the things that supposedly never happened all leading up to the op in which they take out Bin Laden. As a movie it only serves as a reminder of what happened. It's not particularly entertaining, and not worth watching a second time.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Zero Dark Thirty is an excellent film that is based on an actual event that impacted U.S. history and it safe to say that the use of narrative and technical design of this film worked naturally. And Jessica Chastain is a shining diamond throughout this whole film without a doubt. No wonder why Kathryn Bigelow is the best female director of all-time when pulling off such movies like this alongside with a terrific cast and crew that helped make Zero Dark Thirty happen.

Great movie that delivers. It is a truly exciting story of this ongoing manhunt. Jessica Chastain nails her part, and most of the other actors are awesome. Special mention to the torture victims, the seem so very allmost docu like. Bigelow is one of the most important female instructors, and Zero Dark Thirty, just helps to her already impressing cv.

No love for OBL and I'm glad he's dead. The shame is that the pursuit of him after 9/11 was sidetracked by the Iraq War, an unwarranted and unnecessary slog that has done no good to anyone involved. Kudos to the people who brought him to justice, specifically the members of the SEAL team who took the biggest risks, but what about the intelligence community? This film highlights the length we were willing to go to find one man. The rules we broke to do that. If you're putting this that high up on the list you're either a) condoning that behavior or b) this movie was so well shot and acted, the subject matter was irrelevant. I can't see either. It's a wrote techno-thriller that happens to be about true events. I'm dubious as to him being buried at see too.

The movie is good overall and Jessica Chastain does a great job, the pace isn't always the best tho and it doesn't really hit the climax until the final 25 minutes. Still, a good thriller about a very important event in our history.

Zero Dark Thirty is a long, and sometimes boring, movie of the capture of osama bin laden. The movie has a very promising storyline but i feel it was unnecessarily dragged and could have had a runtime of just over 2 hours. Its slow pace gave away my interest and that's where it took a beating. the final manhunt mission is too dark to be seen (literally!) and i didn't enjoy it either.

The movie is good and Jessica Chastain does a great job, however I'm surprised it got a 95 on Metacritic, the pace isn't always the best and it doesn't really hit the climax until the final 15 minutes. Still, a good thriller about a very important event in our history.

This movie is honestly the US's revenge porn against muslims for 9/11. Really awful, heavy-handed, and above all, boring. Do not waste your time with this one.

By far, this movie has the most gripping and riveting story among all political thrillers I've seen so far. I can't believe that I was so invested watching a movie from one of my least favorite genres. That's largely due to Boal and Bigelow's intelligent script that offers a knotted, nuanced, realistic, and somewhat honest look into a real story about war on terror. Each small detail that leads to another is more convincing than the last. And however the plot is very intricate, I never felt that it was so convoluted that can be difficult to follow. Of course, we get a one-sided look into the real events, but the movie didn't try to be patriotic at all. There are quite a lot of torture scenes at the beginning that are really intense and brutal. The use of hand-held camera Kathryn Bigelow famous for did more harm than good in Zero Dark Thirty. Aside from that I often find the documentary style so distracting and also so obtrusive, Bigelow's reliance on this style deprived Zero Dark Thirty from being one of the best-looking movies of the decade. For Greig Fraser, the director of photography, did an amazing job capturing some of the most stunning images I've seen recently. That being said, this very documentary style gave the movie a somewhat realistic look that only paid off in two situations; the interrogation and torture scenes, and a couple of surprising sequences that are truly heart-pounding. The thing that reminded me a little bit of Villeneuve's Sicario. Speaking of Sicario, this movie suffers from the same issue I had with Sicario. Which is giving so much attention, nay , priority to the moral aspect of the protagonist. But the major issue is that, Maya, our main character, is an entirely flawed and poorly-written character. Without delving into details, there are central changes happened to the character that are as clichéd as they are contradictory, and very very hard to swallow. Putting the blame on Chastain is a crime I won't commit. As she gave one of her best performances in her career. An Oscar-nominated performance that could have been Oscar-worthy unless it was dedicated to an otherwise terribly-written role that made Chastain herself confused as much as I was. The editing in general is pretty elegant and masterful. But the sound editing is what stand out for me. This movie has one of the best uses of the J-cut ever! Nail-biting, nuanced, and thoroughly captivating, Zero Dark Thirty sees Kathryn Bigelow delivering one of the most interesting based-on-true-story movies that is, sadly, lacks a well-wrought, and relatable protagonist. (7.5/10)

A film about fighting terrorists but without the nationalistic **** a lot of similar films have.

kinda like gandalf.. Zero Dark Thirty Between all the factual accuracy and controversies and unfortunate events the film fails to bind all of these into one entertaining drama resulting into an exhausting experience of 156 minutes of just plain old news. Zero Dark Thirty is of course written explicitly and executed with conviction but there is not a single lose thread for the audience to hang on to it until the curtain drops. Jessica Chastain holds on to her part of the role tightly till the end and is convincing throughout being aware of the pressure she has on this project since she is the only glue that binds it all and if they'd have given that character more gravitas and depth along with some high pitched dramatic sequences, it would have just worked. Zero Dark Thirty is the slow pill that takes its time offering weird sensations and some pain along the long road and then results into being the same old pain killer.

Zero Dark Thirty is not a film that has aged gracefully at all. The plot is incredibly slow, and feels more like a revenge porn than anything else. The story is incoherent and bogged down with unnecessary characters that you care nothing about. The hunt for Osama Bin Laden should have been an exciting and engaging film, whereas Zero Dark Thirty is a bore.

Es una genial película, aunque este tipo de cine tan pausado y tan reiterante en operaciones militares en el líbano no le acabo de coger el punto. Eso sí, la parte final de la película es una pasada. Esta señora es una MÁQUINA. Doña Kathryn.

It’s almost impossible for anyone to separate the politics of the War on Terror from Katherine Bigelow’s Oscar nominated drama. The film certainly pulls no punches when it comes to the representation of real world events, from the chilling opening using voice recordings from 9/11 victims you know you are in for a rough ride. First and foremost the film is in no way a glamorised depiction of the hunt for Osama bin Laden or the CIA operatives that carried it out. This is not an air punching salute to the American flag in the style of Michael Bay’s much derived Pearl Harbour. In the opening scenes of the film we are introduced to our main protagonists, our heroes, as they brutally torture a detainee. The camera does not pan away, we do not see a cell door close followed by muffled screams, we see in full the extent of the ‘harsh tactics’ and their effects on the prisoner. This introduction to Jessica Chastain’s Maya and Jason Clarke’s Dan is bold to say the least. Usual Hollywood fair would introduce these characters within a family setting helping you identify and sympathise with them as the film goes on. Not here. Here we have the opposite effect, for the first third of the film I personally found it very hard to like or root for Maya. This lack of empathy towards the character could be exactly what Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were going for. By presenting the facts, events and people involved in this story as dispassionately as possible the filmmakers have allowed the audience to draw their own conclusions. Much like William James (Jeremy Renner) from the Oscar winning The Hurt Locker, some audience members will consider the protagonist a hero others will consider her a dangerous and often arrogant anti-hero. As the plot slowly unfolds it would be very easy to get lost in the technical jargon of the CIA characters as they meticulously sift through information, set up meets with informants and follow paper trails. However by keeping the focus on a central lead in the search (which Maya becomes personally obsessed with) Bigelow keeps a clear narrative that helps to tie together an incredibly complex manhunt with the tense final raid at the films climax. The Hurt Locker proved Bigelow’s talent for building suspense and that talent once again shines through. The fact that the audience knows how events play out and is still on the edge of their seats during the films infamous finale is testament to the skill of the filmmaking on show. Above all Zero Dark Thirty‘s greatest achievement is that it captures the essence of the War on Terror. From the minute details of intelligence gathering to the world changing horrific events that took place, Bigelow shows a sensitivity and frankness that will see the film endure as a drama documenting the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 world. I saw the film in a small screen at a cinema less than 10 miles from the centre of London. When the image of a red double decker bus along with the date 7th July 2005 appeared on screen you could feel the atmosphere in the room change. The War on Terror continues to effect the lives of millions in one way or another. In Zero Dark Thirty audiences all over the world have an intelligent, honest and at times brutal thriller which will provoke debate and discussion for years to come.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

This movie, while based on true events, is full of trite and self-serving propaganda. It's sad to see people praising a movie that is clearly built on lies. Tired of Hollywood's shallow, White House glamourizing propaganda films. This just another Hollywood propaganda movie.

I don't know how so many people gave this good reviews. The acting is painful, the writing horrid, the camera angles are trying to be artsy and failing. Don't watch this movie unless you like to watch awkwardly shot torture scenes followed by long discussions...about said torture.

brilliant, emotive and filmed without flaw zero dark thirty chronicles one of the most difficult army operations in perfect fashion, oscar worthy quite easily