Zero Dark Thirty Reviews

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.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

...a somber, black-winged benediction for what we might count as a lost decade.

Full Review | Original Score: 92/100

Unsettling and unforgettable...challenges the justifications of war's ugly atrocities, without resorting to jingoistic platitudes.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

a brilliant high tech treatment of the subject and the classified nature of the disclosures

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

A film of infectious urgency, questionable accuracy, murky morality and undeniable emotional and intellectual power

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

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...

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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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

Bigelow has directed excellent movies before, but this deserves to be remembered as the film that established her as a master.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

You can't deny that what Zero Dark Thirty sets out to do, it does excellently.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10

An exhilarating and compelling historical document worthy of praise.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Bigelow's latest proves a rewarding piece of filmmaking, one that, in its best moments at least, is as gripping and as troubling as anything the director's ever made.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal shape history -- those breaks, big and small, that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden -- into one of the finest fact-based thrillers since "All the President's Men."

Full Review | Original Score: *****

A ripping revenge yarn.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

Purely as cinematic exercise, Zero Dark Thirty is an exhilarating piece of work. But, beyond its for-the-times subject matter, the work does not linger whatsoever.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Zero Dark Thirty is interesting as opposed to enjoyable, intriguing as opposed to entertaining, and certainly less memorable than The Hurt Locker.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

It's quite remarkable how Bigelow and Boal managed to take 12 years of information (including a conclusion that everyone knows) and packaged it into a coherent, intimate and intense movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5

We know the ending, yet remain mesmerized by familiar details, filmed with a harrowing sense of urgency. It's as close to being in the White House situation room that night, watching a closed-circuit broadcast, as anyone could expect.

Full Review | Original Score: A

What'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.

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