Posts tagged Osama

“All the Awards It Receives”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

Zero Dark Thirty is the fascinating story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden by the C.I.A. and the attack by SEAL Team 6 on his compound in Pakistan which ended with his death.

It was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who previously directed the 2009 The Hurt Locker, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and for which Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director, the first time a woman had ever won that award.

That feat could easily be duplicated with this outstanding film.

The title refers to 30 minutes after midnight, and Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, based on the real C.I.A. agent who was most responsible for the work it took to track down and locate where bin Laden was hiding almost 10 years after the attack and destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City.

Chastain has already won an award for this role and most likely will win many more awards for her outstanding acting in this film.

We see Maya at a so-called “black site,” where she is observing the “enhanced interrogation” of a detainee, which is being conducted by Dan, a fellow agent.

Dan tells the detainee, “When you lie to me, I hurt you.”

And Dan does, which is a bit ingenuous, because how can you tell that a person is lying when such interrogation tactics are being used on him?

Maya is based in Pakistan, and we learn that she didn’t volunteer for this assignment to track down bin Laden, but she was appointed to it because Washington believes she is a “killer” at her job.

While we watch Maya and her colleagues gather the evidence they need in order to uncover the whereabouts of their target, we also see the terrorist attacks around the world that occurred during those years, which were attributed to al Qaida, if not to bin Laden himself.

Maya concentrates her search on one man, Abu Ahmed, whom she believes to be the courier for bin Laden, and time is lost over a confusion brought about by his name.

In fact, Arab names are confusing and hard to understand by westerners, including those in the audience.

Familiar actors also appear in the film, but Chastain stands out.

Zero Dark Thirty deserves all the awards it receives.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”