There’s been huge controversy over Kathryn Bigelow’s use of torture scenes in her hunt for bin Laden movie, and her response is always “It happened deal with it. The trouble is not the use of torture scenes in themselves they were an integral part of the story it’s the fact she seems to have become distracted by the controversy and forgotten to make a cohesive narrative.
The first part of the movie jumps right into the debate, portraying waterboarding and other tortures as Jessica Chastain’s CIA agent Maya is thrown into the reality of hunting bin Laden. The problem is not just that she seems to go along with it although eventually she does it’s that the movie then takes an age to get anywhere afterwards. Scene after scene of Maya sitting at a computer staring at a blue screen, with the odd interrupting phone call, does not riveting cinema make.
Even when what’s at stake here is so high, it’s a strangely underwhelming, unexciting experience. Bigelow’s intention is no doubt to show the painstaking process of tracking down Bin Laden’s courier, and therefore him, but it becomes a tedious, repetitious piece of cinema. She finally identifies a man she believes to be Bin Laden’s courier and her team track the man across crowded pavements and through busy streets.
When we finally get to the last act, the killing of bin Laden by a group of SEALs, the actual shooting is almost an anti-climax, and the uneasy tone continues female shooting victims are justified and glossed over with a shrug of a camouflaged shoulder, while Bin Laden is barely glimpsed.
It’s a shame as there is so much talent here. Chastain deserves her Oscar nomination for a tremendous portrayal of agent Maya, constantly banging her head against a brick wall, trying to use technology to find Bin Laden but continually being frustrated. Her feelings about using torture are never actually discussed, even though she is in the room when it happens several times, but her part makes more sense when trying to persuade big wigs that Osama is in Pakistan. Pale skin stretched across her bony face, she looks washed out at the beginning and positively exhausted at the end, and her steely determination is never in doubt. Bigelow never stoops to giving her a cheap joke either, it’s a laugh-free performance.
As Bigelow showed in The Hurt Locker, she can handle an action sequence with the biggest of big boys the final sequence is brilliantly done technically, with night vision goggles and torches making the grubbiness of what is happening all too real. Nominations for Editing and Sound are well deserved.
The supporting cast is strong too, especially Jennifer Ehle as a doomed co-CIA worker who believes she has made a breakthrough, and James Gandolfini who has to justify the raid to the President himself. Joel Edgerton improves his case as one of the finest actors in cinema at the moment as the chief SEAL in charge of the daring raid, while Mark Strong never quite overcomes a dreadful wig. Hard as they try though they cannot thoroughly justify what is going on at the heart of the movie, which is strange.
Overall verdict: A weirdly unsatisfying movie experience on lots of levels. Fine performances and technical excellence never overcome a sense of paralysis in the script.
Reviewer: Mike Martin