‘Zero Dark Thirty’ monumental, brilliant

By STEVEN REA
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Kathryn Bigelow’s slow-burning and brilliant “Zero Dark Thirty” presents itself as “based on firsthand accounts of actual events.” And while some people — U.S. senators, the acting head of the CIA among them — have challenged its veracity on certain key points, this much can be said: 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.

Yes, we know the outcome: bin Laden shot dead by Navy SEALs in his compound in Bilal, Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.  And still, every step leading to that nighttime raid — and every step the SEALs take moving stealthily up the narrow stairs of bin Laden’s house — is fraught with tension and dread. Bigelow — in tandem with screenwriter Mark Boal, her partner on their Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker” — is simply at the top of her game.

And so is Jessica Chastain. The actress, who seemed to be in every other movie released in 2011 (landing a supporting-actress Oscar nomination for “The Help,” winning heaps o’ praise for her work in “Take Shelter” and “The Tree of Life”), stars as Maya, a CIA officer obsessed with tracking down the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

Based on a real operative in the agency, Chastain’s Maya is cool and composed, her eyes often hidden behind aviator glasses, her expression unrevealing. Maybe there’s a twitch of discomfort as she observes a colleague (Jason Clarke) brutally interrogating a suspected al-Qaeda contact, or maybe that was just a fly buzzing annoyingly around her in the hot, dirty cell.

If “Zero Dark Thirty” (the title is military-speak for half-past midnight) represents the globe-spanning, 10-year search for bin Laden — full of false leads and fatal attacks — it also represents the personal journey of a woman who has nothing else but this mission.

Over dinner at the Islamabad Marriott, a fellow agent, another woman (a terrific Jennifer Ehle), asks Maya if there’s a man in her life. There isn’t.

And after a meeting at a CIA “black site” goes terribly wrong and Maya is forced to return Stateside, to continue her quest on laptops and satellite monitors, she tells her boss: “A lot of my friends have died trying to do this. I believe I was spared so I can finish the job.”

Her tone isn’t self-righteous, or messianic. But maybe it is a little crazy. Does Maya have anything else to live for?

Agents and embassy officials, special operations commandos and Saudi informants, White House aides and al-Qaeda detainees — they come and go, and Maya takes what information she can, and gives back what she must.