Zero Dark Thirty Reviews
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.
Chastain makes Maya as vivid as a bloodshot eye. Her porcelain skin, delicate features and feminine attire belie the steel within.
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| Original Score: 4/4
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.
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| Original Score: 3/4
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.
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| Original Score: C+
From the very first scenes of Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathryn Bigelow demonstrates why she is such a formidable filmmaker, as adept with human emotion as with visceral, pulse-quickening action.
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| Original Score: 4/4
A timely and important reminder of the agonizing human price of zealotry.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Not only is Zero Dark Thirty one of the year's best movies, it's an inspiring one to share with your daughters. That is, if they're old enough to deal with explicit torture scenes.
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| Original Score: 4/4
What the film says about getting information from terrorism suspects in an era of high-tech surveillance depends on your point of view. What is unquestionable is how powerful its full scope is.
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| Original Score: 4/5
Bigelow's extensive staging of the May 1, 2011, raid is a prime example of virtuoso action filmmaking.
Even more than The Hurt Locker, which sometimes relied on traditional film techniques to build suspense, Zero Dark Thirty resists manipulating the viewer or building movie-movie excitement.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
One of the most innovative and best made films of the past year. Every now and then, even Dick Cheney gets to like a great movie.
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| Original Score: 4/4
[It] isn't easy viewing - but just try to look away.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Its stance is extremely tricky. It's not a documentary. It's not a load of revenge nonsense. It's not "24." I'm still arguing with myself over parts of it.
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| Original Score: 4/4
"Zero Dark Thirty" is a great movie, an astonishing achievement on nearly every level.
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| Original Score: 5/5
Swift, smart, relentless, Zero Dark Thirty compresses a decade of high-stakes procedural into 157 minutes of pure momentum.
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| Original Score: A
As a hugely compressed account of the Osama bin Laden manhunt, as a compelling but troubling look at "black ops" tradecraft, and as a riveting portrait of a fiercely determined woman working in a male-dominated sphere, the film is a resounding success.
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| Original Score: 4/4
It's a movie made with the same coolly fanatical attention to craft the lead character displays in her work.
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| Original Score: 4/4
At the very least Bigelow has widened her reach past the white-knuckle thrills of The Hurt Locker and into the darkest currents of American military might -- at the risk of being swept away.
What it does in the course of telling a seminal story of our time is what contemporary films so rarely do, serve as brilliant provocation.
A powerful, morally complicated work on an urgent subject. It is a film that deserves-that almost demands-to be seen and argued over.
Movies must move, and this one just lies there like a stack of paper from a classified government filing cabinet.
[Chastain's performance has] a lot of colors, and angles, and is guaranteed to be remembered come awards time. Maya's a real character, all right.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Kathryn Bigelow proves herself once again to be a master of heightened realism and narrative drive in this retelling of the decade-long search for Osama bin Laden.
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| Original Score: 4/5
This is not a triumphant story in [the] telling, but it is one uncommonly freighted with the weight of history.
There's an emotional detachment to the film that undercuts its potency. Zero Dark Thirty is more technically proficient than emotionally involving.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
A movie that's going to part of the national discussion, both politically and artistically, and deservedly so. Whether you love it, hate it, or have mixed feelings, it's not to be ignored.
Even the smallest touches in Zero Dark Thirty feel authentic enough that we scarcely question them ...
A compelling contemporary thriller with the added benefit of also being an engrossing character study.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
The knockout punch of the movie season is being delivered by Zero Dark Thirty. Chastain is a marvel, and Bigelow and Boal top their Oscar-winning work in The Hurt Locker.
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| Original Score: 4/4
It mixes checkable facts with dramatic license, but "Zero Dark Thirty" has no overweening political agenda. Instead, it unfolds with the cool detachment of a documentary even in its most tense and gripping scenes.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Once in a long while, a fresh-from-the-headlines movie fuses journalism, procedural high drama, and the oxygenated atmosphere of a thriller into a new version of history written with lightning... [Zero Dark Thirty] is that kind of movie.
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| Original Score: A
As disturbing as it often is to watch, it's so rife with sheer cinematic material that it's likely to reward multiple viewings.
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| Original Score: 5/5
The most important American fiction movie about Sept. 11, a landmark that would be more impressive if there were more such films to choose from.
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| Original Score: 5/5
It combines ruthlessness and humanity in a manner that is paradoxical and disconcerting yet satisfying as art.
By showing scenes of torture without taking any kind of moral (as opposed to tactical) stand on what we are seeing, Bigelow has made an amoral movie -- which is, I would argue, an unconscionable approach to this material.
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| Original Score: C+
A vital, disturbing, and necessary film ...
[Its] moral ambiguity will drive some viewers nuts, but in my view it is also the quality that makes "Zero Dark Thirty" something close to a masterpiece.
The details are gripping, presented with respect for an audience's intelligence.
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| Original Score: 5/5
Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal [operate] from the idea that doubt is dynamic, while moral certainty is just another kind of stasis.
In its narrative arc, it is barely distinct from a boneheaded right-wing revenge picture, but the vibe is cool, brisk, grown-up, packed with impressively real-sounding intel jargon. And the hero is no gun-toting macho man.
The ultra-professional result may be easier to respect than enjoy, but there's no denying its power.
This is movie journalism that snaps and stings, that purifies a decade's clamor and clutter into narrative clarity, with a salutary kick.
The story of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden builds relentlessly to a powerful end result.
