Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Average Rating: 8.6/10
Reviews Counted: 253
Fresh: 236 | Rotten: 17
Gripping, suspenseful, and brilliantly crafted, Zero Dark Thirty dramatizes the hunt for Osama bin Laden with intelligence and an eye for detail.
Average Rating: 9/10
Critic Reviews: 48
Fresh: 44 | Rotten: 4
Gripping, suspenseful, and brilliantly crafted, Zero Dark Thirty dramatizes the hunt for Osama bin Laden with intelligence and an eye for detail.
liked it
Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 179,929
Movie Info
For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man. -- (C) Official Site
Cast
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Joel Edgerton
Patrick - Squadron T... -
Jason Clarke
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Jessica Chastain
Maya -
Kyle Chandler
Joseph Bradley -
Jennifer Ehle
Jessica -
Harold Perrineau
Jack -
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Zero Dark Thirty Trailer & Photos
All Critics (253) | Top Critics (48) | Fresh (236) | Rotten (17) | DVD (3)
If you like World War II films, you'll enjoy this.
Top CriticWhat's striking is the absence of triumphalism -- Bigelow doesn't shy away from showing the victims shot down in cold blood in the compound -- and we come away with the overwhelming sense that this has been a grim, dark episode in our history.
This is an instant classic.
Chastain makes Maya as vivid as a bloodshot eye. Her porcelain skin, delicate features and feminine attire belie the steel within.
No doubt Zero Dark Thirty serves a function by airing America's dirty laundry about detainee and torture programs, but in its wake, there's a crying need for a compassionate Coming Home to counter its brutal Deer Hunter.
While "Zero Dark Thirty" may offer political and moral arguing points aplenty, as well as vicarious thrills,as a film it's simply too much of a passable thing.
The film, much like it's heroine played by Jessica Chastain (The Help), is steely-resolved with eyes only for the task at hand.
Even without getting a Hollywood makeover, the story has inherent drama, suspense, and thrills, which Bigelow lets arise naturally.
A historical timeline, a pulsating thriller, a moving character study and a true-life violent revenge story, all in one, told in a sweating, oppressive, strangling fashion.
Zero Dark Thirty is truly one of the best films of 2012. In my list, it is the best...
"Zero Dark Thirty" shows guts in taking on loaded subject matter and filmmaking confidence and skill in not telling us how we should feel about it.
It provides a much needed catharsis for what was done to nearly 3,000 innocent Americans at the behest of a mass-murdering religious zealot.
...a somber, black-winged benediction for what we might count as a lost decade.
Unsettling and unforgettable...challenges the justifications of war's ugly atrocities, without resorting to jingoistic platitudes.
a brilliant high tech treatment of the subject and the classified nature of the disclosures
A film of infectious urgency, questionable accuracy, murky morality and undeniable emotional and intellectual power
Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty is a grueling masterpiece that captures the hunt for bin Laden with a daunting amount of realism and efficiency.
The direction by Kathryn Bigelow, who won Oscars for Best Film and Best Director in her previous film "The Hurt Locker," is fierce and focused...
Indulges Cheneyian fantasies complete with the bad-movie scene of the prisoner's defiance: "You're just a garbage man in the corporation," shouts the Arab who needs a lesson in manners from the Ph.D. (in torture?) who is racking him.
Bigelow tells the story very well, very efficiently, but doesn't really say much about it, which is ironic given the response to the film in some quarters.
Kathryn Bigelow takes the procedural model and brushes away every unnecessary detail, leaving behind a heavy, blunt object of a film that is also hugely watchable, engrossing and, best of all... highly suspenseful.
Rotten Tomatoes notes that I agree with Tomatometer critics 80 percent of the time, but this is one of those times I have to part ways with them.
Bigelow has directed excellent movies before, but this deserves to be remembered as the film that established her as a master.
You can't deny that what Zero Dark Thirty sets out to do, it does excellently.
An exhilarating and compelling historical document worthy of praise.
Audience Reviews for Zero Dark Thirty
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Dan: We don't know what we don't know.
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- Dan: Everybody breaks. It's biology.
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- Maya: I'm the motherfucker that found this place, Sir.
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- Maya: I'm the motherfucker who found this place, Sir.
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- Maya: Kind of like Gandalf?
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- Patrick - Squadron Team Leader: Do you realize what you just did?
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| How on Earth can a movie like this get good reviews? | 40 days ago | 289 |
| The end of Mick Travis? | 8 months ago | 200 |
| Is This Film a Piece of War Propaganda? | 4 months ago | 161 |
| A message to Kathryn Bigelow | 4 months ago | 110 |
| Long live jingoism! | 4 months ago | 97 |
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Foreign Titles
- Zero Dark Thirty (DE)
- Zero Dark Thirty (UK)
