1 Line Review: The aura behind this story makes it a must watch, highly recommended.
This is a story of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man – Osama Bin Laden. ZDT in military terminology means 30 minutes past midnight, supposed to be the darkest hour.
Am currently reading a book called – ‘The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda’s road to 9/11′, which not only explains how, why and when of even the smallest detail about Al Qaeda’s birth in the 1980’s and all the operational details since then but also tells you about the dark stories from 1950 onwards which eventually converged into being the biggest terrorist organisation of all times – Al-Qaeda.
Now, coming to the movie – It is a 2 hour 40 minutes dramatization of the whole saga of how the CIA got hold of the location where Bin Laden was hiding and how it was attached, in detail (well, as much as it could have been done in such short time). The show stopper is Jessica Chastain (Maya) the CIA officer who single handed does research for more than 5 years (and travels across the globe) to get to the most wanted man. The original character’s sole commitment is commendable and Jessica does full justice to this role – she has already won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress and is nominated for the Oscars!
There were a lot of interrogations that were conducted to get to the man. ZDT shows only a few, but then the thrill starts building up naturally (after an hour or so) as the search starts getting closer and closer to the target. The killing of Bin Laden has been captured exactly the way it happened. I can say that with confidence as I have read the book, ‘No Easy Day’, written by one of the SEAL members (Mark Owen) who was a part of this operation. Surprising to everyone, Bin Laden did no try to use a weapon in his defense! He infact tried pushing his last wife to take the bullet, in front of him.
Strange but true: Even on the day of attack no one was 100% sure if the person inside the house being attacked is Bin Laden, ofcourse Maya was 100% confident! Most of the shooting of the movie was done in India as they did not get permission to shoot in Pakistan. The house in Abbottabad, Pakistan was raided and Osama Bin Laden was killed on 2nd May, 2011.
Goes without saying that the Hero of the movie, Zero Dark Thirty is none other than Maya (Jessica Chastain), hands down.
Mind you ZDT has been directed by the same lovely lady (Kathryn Bigelow) who made the awesome ‘The Hurt Locker’, which won hundreds of accolades. ZDT is already winning more. Keep an eye on Oscars – Argo, Life of Pi and ZDT will win the most, am predicting!