Review: Zero Dark Thirty

Storytelling is, by its nature, manipulative, and plenty of great movies are so because they know how to twist your perceptions to their purpose. A well-crafted, emotional workout, whether thrilling, tear-jerking, or comical, makes for one hell of an experience, and the degree of pleasure you get from letting a movie works its magic on you will cement its place in your mind. But then there’s the other class of great movie, the kind that demands you pull your own weight, and meet it as an equal, no matter how unsettling doing so might be. These films aren’t made to go down smoothly; they come sharpened and barbed, designed to stick inside your head, and make you bleed from the inside, until you’re wondering why you didn’t just watch the stupid Hollywood dress-up movie with name like Gangster Squad.

In reliving the exhaustive manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty could only ever exist among the latter class of films, regardless of whether or not it turned out to be great, which it most certainly is. Expanding the “boots on the ground” style that won her Best Director and Best Picture titles for The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow, and writer Mark Boal, turn their focus to the defining conflict of the last decade, exploring a fight against terrorism by American intelligence agencies that’s as dangerous, and wearying, as any war without clear borders or armies would be.

The film opens two years after 9/11, in one of the many off the books black sites the C.I.A. is operating on foreign soil. “This is what defeat looks like,” barks one of their operatives, as he waterboards a detainee who has clearly been through this routine, and much worse, already. Looking on is recent transfer Maya (Jessica Chastain), a wispy young woman who looks like she might get carried off by a strong desert wind. Her small frame and soft face belie a fierce purpose, one that Chastain is always subtly telegraphing, when not letting it be unleashed in full. Maya is our guide, of sorts, through the next ten years, as her globetrotting journey is made to mirror that of the real life analyst who was largely responsible for finding Bin Laden.

It is through her eyes that we come to understand how inadequate the greatest intelligence resources in the world were when it came to finding one man, especially since doing so became less of a priority as the search dragged on, and domestic security concerns grew as threats went to ground. With so many painful memories to draw from, Zero Dark Thirty has no difficulty in uncovering the raw nerves accumulated over a tumultuous decade, but its daring comes from willing to strike those wounds, again, and again. The results are more than a little upsetting, as they ought to be.

Bigelow and Boal have taken on an unenviable task here, as they set out to compress an era’s worth of fleeting victories, political turmoil, and empty-handed frustration into two and a half hours. While a departmental effort to apprehend a killer might bring to mind cop dramas –and sure enough, sources are “interrogated,” red herrings get rundown, and the hunters often rank among the causalities- the film eschews a traditional thriller structure, often feeling more like a series of chronological vignettes (complete with intertitles) that build towards one moment.

The diffuse narrative would make Zero Dark Thirty as episodic and unfocused as something like The Master, were it not so charged with real history. It rarely lingers on one scene or event for too long, leaping ahead years at a time to showcase how the ongoing battle of attrition is evolving. It’s reminiscent of David Fincher’s Zodiac, another film about a seemingly fruitless hunt for a famed murderer (each employs audio recordings set against a black backdrop, denoting tectonic cultural shifts with striking effectiveness). Both films weigh down one side of a scale with a boogeyman, giving the individuals and nation tasked with finding him the high ground. But the longer, and more desperate the search becomes, the more the avengers give of themselves, and the balance starts to tip. When all is said and done, what is accomplished must be measured against where the scale stands, something Zero Dark Thirty isn't afraid to do.

The film has kicked up quite a controversy over its depiction of torture. The opening fifteen minutes continue the earlier mentioned waterboarding scene with a detail and intensity that’s disturbing, but not exploitative. These sequences, and there are plenty of them, serve to provoke a reaction out of the audience, one that is then tempered by the events that follow. Critics will point to how the brutal actions of C.I.A. spooks helped lead (in circuitous fashion) to the eventual discovery of Bin Laden’s compound, and how hand-tied the agency looks when trying to confirm his presence without the use of “enhanced interrogation.”

To call this a tacit endorsement of torture, however, is bafflingly simplistic. Yes, the film demonstrates the hard truth that physical and mental abuse of a person can cause them to give up information, but the actionable value and validity of that information is always in question. Zero Dark Thirty doesn’t paint with a black and white brush; instead, it asks the audience to consider if there's a point where our hope for a silver bullet to terrorism exceeds our duty to not commit unforgiveable acts against other human beings, or if such things even exist. It all comes together in the film’s breathless finale, a near-real time recreation of the Navy SEAL strike against Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. Bigelow is excellent at shooting dialogue and information delivery, but here she confirms her status as a world-class director of action, not in terms of giant explosions and gunfights, but in capturing people as they make momentous decisions through movement.

When the events that transpired in the early minutes of May 2nd do occur, and the last shots have been fired, your reaction will vary, and this is the film’s crowning achievement. For some, it will be a cathartic release for ten years’ worth of bided rage, a cinematic reminder of the relief that came in 2011. Don’t be surprised if you hear an audible whooping in your theatre. For others, though, the moment will be utterly empty, a success qualified to the edge of irrelevance, and delayed past the point of gratification. Beyond its technical prowess, superb cast, and tight script, Zero Dark Thirty is a great film because it doesn’t tell you what to think. It’s a harrowing, unforgettable assault, summed up by one final, devastating look from Chastain that asks, “Was it worth it?” That’s up to you to decide, which may take some time. Zero Dark Thirty is meant to be chewed over, and swallowed hard, to leave your stomach clenched, and teeth set on edge. You can spit it out, but you won't escape the lingering taste of smoke and ashes.

5 out of 5

Zero Dark Thirty

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

2012, USA

Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

Originally Posted June 25th, 2010 [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utERS_CJCJQ]

It’s Christmas Eve in Stockholm, and disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is given an intriguing proposition: learn what happened to the heir of the industrious Vangar family, who disappeared forty years ago, in exchange for the proof that can restore his name. A hesitant Mikael accepts, but before long, he becomes tangled in the Vangar clan's long history of lies, betrayal, and abuse. As the trail of the missing girl leads deeper into the past, Mikael is aided by an unlikely ally, the enigmatic and volatile computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander. The two join common cause in a race against time to expose the disturbing truth about what happened to Harriett Vangar 36 years ago.

If this sounds like a crackerjack premise for a novel, then it shouldn’t surprise you that Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become a worldwide phenomenon since being released in Sweden five years ago. An engrossing and character-driven mystery, the pulpy tale is punctuated with moments of extreme violence.  It is the first of Larsson’s trilogy of Millennium novels, which have sold more than 21 million copies. The sales figures alone were probably all the convincing Swedish production company Yellow Bird needed to release a theatrical version. The film, which saw wider release in March of this year, has gone on to strong financial success.

I went into The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo like I imagine most other audience members did, having read and enjoyed the book, curious to see if the brooding prose and slick pace could survive an adaptation. In print, Larsson’s novel is a thoroughly absorbing thriller, mainly due to its two sympathetic and engaging lead characters. Mikael is a charming yet dedicated journalist, who’s as mindful of his various relationships as he is in exposing corruption in the Swedish market. His easygoing nature makes him immediately likeable, while his idealism is easy to root for. It’s important that Mikael is so well-written, because otherwise, he would be totally eclipsed by his partner. The titular punk rocker/computer genius immediately grabs the reader’s attention with an appearance that’s equal parts Aeon Flux and Brandon Lee's The Crow. Lisbeth’s fashion sense is just the packaging of a scarred and hardened youth whose horrific past has left her capable of just about anything. Make no mistake, she’s as dangerous as she is beguiling.

It’s unfortunate, then, that these characters, who are easily the best part of Larsson’s first novel, don’t translate nearly as well to the screen. Mikael, as played by Michael Nyqvist, comes off as more of a pushover than a crusading journalistic champion. In the novel, Mikael agrees to work for Henrik Vangar because he is promised a means of reviving his tarnished name. In the film, no mention of this is given, so we’re left to assume he takes the job because he just doesn’t have much else going on at the time. Lisbeth fares much better, and Noomi Rapace should be commended for her work. Rapace, whose background is mostly in theatre, underplays Lisbeth in the best possible way, intriguing the audience with her matter-of-fact dialogue without ever becoming trite. She’s the immediate source of attention whenever on screen. However, without the insight provided by a narrator, the film can’t portray the smaller details that make the protagonists compelling, and in Lisbeth’s case, the character is established through sheer blunt force.

It’s made abundantly clear when we first meet Lisbeth that she’s no ordinary twenty-four year-old. References to sexual abuse by her father give the audience some idea of what makes her the way she is.  The first twenty minutes of her screen time involve Lisbeth suffering and then exacting revenge on another authority figure who has betrayed her. The scenes are never exploitative but are for the most part unnecessary. Director Niels Arden Oplev treats the subject matter frankly, but doesn’t seem to know when the audience has had enough. In the book this portion comes off as episodic, where it helps to establish the severity of the suffering Lisbeth has endured and how ready she is to exact vengeance. On screen, this diversion adds nothing to the plot of the film and instead devolves into two very troubled people traumatizing each other for twenty minutes, with perhaps the promise of a payoff once the other two books in the trilogy are filmed. At 152 minutes in length, it seems clear where some cuts could have been made.

Without the presence of the two leads, it falls to the mystery driving the story to pick up the slack. Much of the fun of any who-dunnit comes from building your own theories on what happened and who’s the bad guy. What makes this particular crime intriguing is that the culprit must have been a member of the Vangar family, who at the time were all isolated together in their family estate. However, no time is used to cast suspicion on the range of suspects, with the revelation of the perpetrator’s identity offering little in the way of catharsis. Between extensive shots of computer screens and old photographs, there’s no time for the audience to formulate their own theories. This is just another core problem with adapting the plot, since much of it involves pouring over old files and digging through archives, which doesn’t exactly translate to gripping cinema. It also doesn’t help that Jacob Groth’s score seems only capable of alternating between two painfully long notes, which is much more grating than it is suspenseful.

To its credit, aside from a few aforementioned scenes, the film is always visually appealing. Both the darkened streets of Stockholm and the frozen countryside add to the bleak tone, and all the actors are wonderfully cast. Every character looks like a real person, which adds greatly to the believability of the story. It’s likely that most investigative journalists look more like Nyqvist than Robert Redford. It’s also refreshing to see people in a movie using actual computers as opposed the fictional ones, where the only desktop items are all titled MAIL and INTERNET, and the command console is just a single keystroke away (granted, it looks like every Macbook shown can manipulate photos with incredible versatility. Is there such a thing as IEnhance?).

There is talk already of a Hollywood remake which will surely fix some issues with the Swedish version, but almost certainly ruin the original's charm. No doubt the sexual violence will be downplayed but with Daniel Craig and Kirsten Stewart rumoured as leads, whatever vague sense of realism the original had is doomed. This is definitely one of those cases where the material will stick with you much longer on paper than on celluloid.

3 out of 5

Directed by Niels Arden Oplev

2009, Sweden

Review: Zodiac

Originally Posted June 27th, 2010

For two years, the San Francisco Bay area staged a desperate manhunt to stop the man responsible for a series of bizarre and brutal murders, between 1969, and 1971. In cryptic letters to newspapers, the killer boasted of his attacks, and made a variety of new threats involving school buses and bombs. The man, calling himself The Zodiac, would become a lightning rod for a restless American psyche otherwise occupied with the ongoing war in Vietnam. Yet, before any arrest could be made, the letters stopped, and The Zodiac vanished. With only one other authentic letter appearing in 1974, the crimes of the bay area boogeyman would quickly fade from public consciousness. To this day, the case remains open in three counties, and no arrest has ever been made.

The "one that got away" is a common component of police procedurals, usually involving a burnt out dick warning another detective not to get too deep into the job when doggedly pursuing of a killer. Losing oneself in a mystery can come at the cost of relationships and sanity. The next time you tell someone a really good brain teaser, keep the answer to yourself and see how long it takes for them to try and pry it out of you. This is probably the main reason why filming the story of the Zodiac murders has taken more than thirty years. The killings were shocking, twisted, and captivating, which are buzzwords most producers like to see on a poster. The problem: any film about Zodiac would have no ending. To this day, the true identity of The Zodiac is unknown. Now, imagine how frustrating Se7en would have been if it had ended without ever revealing the killer's identity. So it’s no small feat that David Fincher has taken the investigation that never ended and turned it into one of the best films of the last decade.

Zodiac’s greatest strength, and some would argue its greatest weakness, is its commitment to portraying the events surrounding case as truthfully as possible. The film is based on the real life accounts of Robert Graysmith, who was a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle during the height of the attacks. Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) would become more and more involved in the case as the police investigation died down. His novel of the same name is the blueprint for Fincher’s version, and it is replicated in painstaking detail. Even some of the stranger facts, such as the curiously large number of sweaters worn by Zodiac victim Michael Mageau, are included to make the stranger than fiction details of this real case all the more puzzling.

The film covers more than twenty years, starting with the first Zodiac letters and extending all the way into the 1990’s. In retelling the accounts chronologically, the majority of the film’s action sequences take place within the first hour, and even then there are only a handful. By the time lead detective Dave Toschi (Ruffalo) appears to investigate the one and only confirmed Zodiac killing in San Francisco, audience members should be prepared for an onslaught of the red stuff, and I mean tape, not blood.  This is a film where the big police victory isn’t getting the man, but is instead getting a warrant. The attention to detail given to the investigation will probably discourage viewers used to watching police paperwork covered in a quick montage.  “No need for due process right,” jokes Toschi after watching Dirty Harry, whose villain was based on Zodiac. While certainly less sexy than an episode of CSI, putting the viewer in the thick of the investigation’s minutiae properly emphasizes how easy it is to get crushed under the day-to-day of working on one case.

It’s difficult to convey to viewers how exhausting time can be in a film. A fade out can cover unfathomable amounts of time in a matter of seconds, with the audience being no worse for wear. Spanning more than three decades, Zodiac is one of those rare films that makes you feel the weight of time passing as the investigation begins to slow down. At over two and a half hours, Zodiac will test your endurance. A skyscraper is literally built before your eyes during the time between major breaks in the case. In a brilliantly constructed transition, darkness is set to the cycling sounds of pop songs and headlines from 1972, through 1977, covering America’s “Horse with no name” to The Ohio Player’s “Love Rollercoaster”. In that time, the war in Vietnam ended, and America had a new pet serial killer, the Son of Sam (who had a TV movie less than a decade after being arrested). By the third act, it seems like everyone, including Zodiac, has moved on.

This is where the film picks up speed and moves from police procedural into territory more commonly found in modern thrillers, with Gyllenhaal’s Graysmith taking over the investigation. There’s still plenty of paperwork mind you, but as Graysmith and the case slowly start to unravel, there’s a sense of foreboding that gives reading old police reports a kinetic energy bordering on full-blown frenzy. Gyllenhaal proved himself capable of a slow-burn performance in DonnieDarko, but here, his transition from boy-scout cartoonist to obsessed detective is backed by visible signs of depletion, as his fresh face slowly darkens from restless nights spent hunting a killer the world has forgotten. The soundtrack shifts from era appropriate pop songs to morbid piano pieces, all while San Francisco is caught in a never-ending rainstorm. It’s not long before Graysmith begins receiving mysterious phone calls, and it appears his life is in danger. The tension reaches a crescendo in a scene inside a California basement. It’s one of the most suspenseful and terrifying ever filmed.

Beyond the facts of the Zodiac case, the film reaches into some fairly well worn territory about the way police work stresses relationships with family or coworkers. The friendship between Graysmith and criminal reporter (and one-time Zodiac target) Paul Avery (Downey Jr.) is mostly fictionalized, but their various tête-à-têtes make for some light comic relief. If Fincher is to be faulted with anything, it’s that he cheats a bit with his ending. The film gives a certain amount of closure to the killer’s identity, which, while true to Graysmith’s book, doesn’t properly do justice to the reality, which is far more intriguing. I had never heard of the Zodiac murders until watching this movie, and in a way, I wish I never had. The world let go, and it seems that we’ll never know the truth behind who the Zodiac really was. It’s an answer that I may not like, but it’s one I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

5 out of 5

Directed by David Fincher

2007, USA