The answer can only be ‘no’. From a devastating opening that plays an audio track of the anguished phone-calls of people caught in the World Trade Center on September 11, to scenes of American interrogators waterboarding prisoners, she merely presents uncomfortable truths.
Jessica Chastain is incredible as Maya, a CIA field operative, who becomes the driving force behind the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a search that eventually consumes her. Watching her transformation, from reluctant newcomer to isolated obsessive, is harrowing.
“You’re gonna kill him for me,” she snarls at a SEAL raider. Maya has made the terrorist’s capture her personal mission and her only chance for salvation, for peace of mind.
The SEAL team’s assault on the compound that housed bin Laden is masterfully handled. Bigelow is aware of space and geography even under the cover of darkness.
Zero Dark Thirty explores the murky places we are prepared to go in pursuit of the greater good – and asks if it is worth losing our collective – or individual – soul in the process.