ZERO DARK THIRTY

 
“The Greatest Manhunt in History” is an apt tagline for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ which for months was referred to as “the untitled hunt for Osama Bin Laden movie”.  Kathryn Bigelow’s first film since 2009’s Best Picture winner ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a detailed account of the decade long hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the intelligence and strategy that led to his killing.  Bigelow again teams up with writer Mark Boal (Academy Award winning writer ‘The Hurt Locker’) who displays a vivid picture of the rigorous process to locate Bin Laden.

Unfortunately due to the relatively late release date of the film (wide January 11^th) and the extremely early release date of Oscar nominations this year (January 10^th) I wasn’t able to see ‘ZD30’ until after seeing what it had been nominated for.  Had I seen it previous to nominations however I would have thought it would garner more attention.  Yes it was nominated for Best Picture, yes Boal is again nominated for his screenplay, and yes Jessica Chastain, who plays the CIA operative behind the investigation into Bin Laden’s whereabouts, has a great chance at winning Best Actress but the film was snubbed in some key categories.  The most glaring omission was no Best Director nomination for Bigelow.  Bigelow is coming off a Best Director win for her previous film and does a great job walking a fine line between painstaking honesty and torture propaganda in ‘ZD30’.  Also the film was only nominated for two tech categories: Film Editing and Sound Editing.  The film could have and quite frankly should have gotten nominations in both Cinematography (in place ‘Anna Karenina’, a total joke nom) and Sound Mixing.

So why the lack of love for ‘ZD30’?  Primarily it has to do with timing; the nominations came out on January 10^th and the film wasn’t release wide until January 11^th.  Of course most Oscar voters have the ability to catch early screenings or go to the limited releases in NY or LA but many Oscar voters won’t go to extra trouble to see films unless there is buzz.  ‘ZD30’ just didn’t have the buzz going and even after its wide release it’s still not talked about heavily in Oscar circles.  The other aspect that hurts the film in my opinion is its lack of emotional pull.  Although Jeremy Renner’s protagonist in ‘The Hurt Locker’ is emotionally detached the audience still has a reason to root for him, maybe it’s the hope he can overcome, change, become “normal”.  ‘ZD30’ doesn’t have that, sure you want Maya (Chastain) to succeed and find Bin Laden but the film plays more as a documentary than a drama.

We’ll see what happens on Oscar night but short of Chastain being a serious player in the Best Actress category, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ might fail the mission to bring home any statues.