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The quoted poster has a reply to that but chooses not to stir the pot on this topic any further. Almost anything I could say has already been said by many others during the past month; suffice it to say I think it's not only a question of what is there but the unstated assumptions (which by nature are hard to make a really damning case out of) and everything that's not there, i.e. a lack of depth and insight into the issued it deals with, which could have made it more than just an exciting and popular action-thriller.

I saw it this afternoon and was exactly what I expected:a very good movie with a simple glance at how things went in the process of finding and killing Bin Laden. The torture scenes are not glorified or promoted like many have mistakenly said over the net. The film's main problem is maybe not exploring in more detail some of the events that led to the raid of Bin Laden, which I can understand since then it would have been too much to put into a single film and most likely that information still classified. The other problem is that the timeline of the story is a little vague, especially in the beginning, that even with some of the timestamps shown, it was confusing to see how much time had passed from one scene to the next. Other than that, the film was solid by all accounts and the raid scene at the end is a must see for those who have seen how the US went from September 11 to finally killing the mastermind behind the attacks after so much politicking and misleading reasons for war.

I can certainly see why Jessica Chastain was nominated since she did a hell of a job. Still, I found Argo to be a better film, maybe because the source of information has been declassified by the CIA and Affleck had more and better material to work with.

Much like THE HURT LOCKER, I felt this film's emphasis is on the distancing or dehumanizing effect the "procedure" has on its participants. The torture scenes are certainly played this way and, therefore, moot the controversy in my eyes. There are numerous haunting moments...

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Maya carrying on a casual conversation as she watches a drone strike in real time; the intimation that the pet monkeys that Dan plays with have been killed by his peers

...that speak to the environment these characters must work in.

As to Maya being recruited right out of high school...

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Her hunt for Bin Laden has occupied her entire adult life which suggests that the mission has grown into a way of life for her. She becomes increasingly anxious for this phase of her life to end once she has solved the puzzle in her own mind (identifying the compound where she believes Bin Laden is residing). Interestingly (and I consider this a very brave choice by Bigelow), the result of the raid is almost anti-climatic; there are no heroics involved. The target is taken down, but not in a way that provides a cathartic release for the audience. Is this event going to substantially change Maya's life...or ours? That last line ("Where do you want to go?") is not just addressed to Maya, but to the audience as well.

dx23 wrote:I can certainly see why Jessica Chastain was nominated since she did a hell of a job. Still, I found Argo to be a better film, maybe because the source of information has been declassified by the CIA and Affleck had more and better material to work with.

I actually liked Chastain's performance less the second time I saw it. It seems jarring compared to everyone else around her - less naturalistic and too forced in its macho posturings. (The 'MF' crack never worked for me.)

As for Argo, I liked it, but I have a really tough time calling it a better film. It feels off that this is going to be the film Hollywood's toasting over Zero Dark Thirty in light of the latter's controversy - the blatant (and sometimes ludicrous) fabrications of the former may be considered innocuous, but it certainly doesn't play as great art, not unless you have a soft spot for '80s action flicks.

Roger Ryan wrote:Much like THE HURT LOCKER, I felt this film's emphasis is on the distancing or dehumanizing effect the "procedure" has on its participants. The torture scenes are certainly played this way and, therefore, moot the controversy in my eyes. There are numerous haunting moments...

Spoiler

Maya carrying on a casual conversation as she watches a drone strike in real time; the intimation that the pet monkeys that Dan plays with have been killed by his peers

...that speak to the environment these characters must work in.

As to Maya being recruited right out of high school...

Spoiler

Her hunt for Bin Laden has occupied her entire adult life which suggests that the mission has grown into a way of life for her. She becomes increasingly anxious for this phase of her life to end once she has solved the puzzle in her own mind (identifying the compound where she believes Bin Laden is residing). Interestingly (and I consider this a very brave choice by Bigelow), the result of the raid is almost anti-climatic; there are no heroics involved. The target is taken down, but not in a way that provides a cathartic release for the audience. Is this event going to substantially change Maya's life...or ours? That last line ("Where do you want to go?") is not just addressed to Maya, but to the audience as well.

Did you see Alex Gibney's op-ed in Salon calling this film "indefensible"? The sanctimonious attitude aside, the overall thrust of his argument is not a surprise coming from someone who made Taxi to the Dark Side, but it looks like he's blasting the film for refusing to be a didactic, all-out advocacy film against torture, virtually dismissing anything in the film that builds a sense of doubt as being far too little.

It seems pretty clear by now that most of the 'discussion' of this film has nothing at all to do with the film itself.

Even some of the writing by those who claimed they've seen it reads that way!

I think the fact that Bigelow chose to open the movie with a black screen accompanied by audio of calls from 9/11 and followed with the brutal beating of the detainee was a very important decision. It set the background nicely while still ensuring that the first thing we see (and I feel that video has a much greater impact on the viewer than audio) is the brutal beatdown of a man who, as far as the audience knows, may or may not be holding back information, by an agent of the government. I felt that during the first 20 minutes of the film, I sympathized just as much (if not more so) with the poor human being that is tortured and humiliated as much as the frustrations of the man who is doing everything he can to prevent an attack. And I am speaking as a person who would probably be considered a Bush apologist by many on this forum.

I also think it is important to point out that these torture sessions did not produce any actionable intelligence in this film- it wasn't until afterwards, when they were outside and having a meal together, that the agents were able to get the man to admit something. I don't think the big question about torture is "Does torture get information" Of course it does! As long as one person admits one thing under torture, the technique can be considered to have yielded results. Instead, the real question is "Does torture yield results that other techniques would not have?" This is the one that is much more difficult, if not impossible, to answer, since you can never really be sure what would have happened if you had tried something else. But I felt that Bigelow left enough leeway in the plot that the viewer could easily attribute getting the information on Abu Akbar to switching from torture to civilized discourse instead of breaking the detainee with lies. Honestly, the fact that the detainee gave up his friends pretty easily and painlessly makes me thing that maybe the interogators just hadn't asked the right questions up until then (why would they care who he fought in Afghanistan with when his primary function was financial?)

A couple of other ambiguities that stood out to me (even if I don't have much to say about them were

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Mya's open declaration and the SEAL team's orders that Bin Laden was to be killed, and the killing of a wife in the Abbotabad compound.

Both of these felt a bit morally ambiguous and further convinces me that this film was not meant to be a total exoneration of War on Terror. I also really liked the scene where

Spoiler

some locals walked up to investigate the attack on the compound armed with golf clubs and other crude weapons.

This scene gave me the feeling that we are outsiders and don't really belong here, no matter how noble we feel our goals may be.

All in all, I felt the film was much more nuanced than a lot of its critics are making it out to be. I think Bigelow did about as good a job as can be expected with laying down the facts as she understood them, and leaving it up to the audience to judge the actions. Obviously I'm in the camp that what we did was more or less justified, but the film did have many moments that made me pause to reevaluate some of that.

And now Taibbi comes to the fray. At least he doesn't liken her to Leni.

I realize this has gone on long enough but I just saw the film yesterday. For everyone here defending the film I have to say that the critics are right, they do get intelligence from torture in the beginning of the film.

Spoiler

the montage of her watching the torture tapes she hears the name over and over. The first time they get intelligence that helps them do something with that name comes from non-torture methods.

It seems the criticism is that torture never produced intelligence leading to Bin Laden.
My question is did it?
For those who've read more about this did it happen that way, or was this a composite of things that happened?
If no intelligence from torture lead to Bin Laden then the film is wrong and deserves to be condemned.
It it did then the film doesn't.
It was a good action film. The ending was excellent and I think the final scene of asking our main character

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"Where do you wanna go?" has deeper not so right wing implications to it than those who criticize the film are admitting. Perhaps we are supposed to feel the indictment of just how little this really matters. After being so wrapped up in the search for Bin Laden and revenge for 9/11 as a country and during the film as an audience doesn't it all kind of feel pointless in the end?

There are other things I found troubling but as long as we're just talking about torture in relation to this film that's all I want to know. Did we gather usable intelligence that lead to Bin Laden through torture or not?

Also

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He only gives up the name during the hummus lunch after he's threatened with more torture. As an aside it's amazing to me how many have cited that scene in defense of it while completely forgetting about what was actually said.

Alan Smithee wrote:

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"Where do you wanna go?" has deeper not so right wing implications to it than those who criticize the film are admitting. Perhaps we are supposed to feel the indictment of just how little this really matters. After being so wrapped up in the search for Bin Laden and revenge for 9/11 as a country and during the film as an audience doesn't it all kind of feel pointless in the end?

Spoiler

Really surprised at how many people are reading the final scene as somehow meaning something broader. The film went out of its way to implicitly imply anything at all politically. For it to deviate from that at the end is in my view a bit of projection on the part of the viewer.

Alan Smithee wrote: Did we gather usable intelligence that lead to Bin Laden through torture or not

Spoiler

Who the hell really knows?

Well, Alan Smithee, aren't you really just kind of restating the terms of the fundamental debate about the film and the events it depicts? The short answer to your question, which was kind of covered previously in the thread, is no. No crucial intelligence about Bin Laden's ultimate whereabouts, not even the existence or the name of the courier, was first discovered during an interrogation that involved torture or from a detainee who was tortured. However, the team of analysts that ultimately located Bin Laden may have utilized some other information that was tainted by torture. This is the consensus from official government statements -- both from the CIA and from the Senate Intelligence Committee -- and credible reporting in a number of prominent books and articles on the subject. Some have made stronger claims, but the evidence remains classified and we likely won't know more until the Senate opts to declassify at least some portion of its years-long study of this issue.

I actually like the Matt Taibbi piece. I agree with many of his points if not exactly his ultimate conclusion. It's one of the more measured responses I've seen so far from the pundit class. Typically, though, he gloms on to some bit of procedure -- the chopper crash in this case -- badly misunderstanding what happens, what it means and how it reflects on the soldiers and the mission as a whole. The crash is shown faithfully in the film but never really explained. What happened was a phenomenon called a settling with power or a vortex ring state, to which the experimental aircraft was especially prone given it's operating in hot dry air at higher elevations and near full weight. The accident likely could neither have been anticipated or avoided. The pilot's quick reaction to this near disaster saved the lives of everyone on board and allowed the mission to continue. The SEALs made it a point to single out the pilot's skill and bravery for praise when they met the president.

warren oates wrote:Well, Alan Smithee, aren't you really just kind of restating the terms of the fundamental debate about the film and the events it depicts? The short answer to your question, which was kind of covered previously in the thread, is no.

Black Hat wrote:

Alan Smithee wrote: Did we gather usable intelligence that lead to Bin Laden through torture or not

Who the hell really knows?

Ya see what I'm sayin? Through all these pages of spoiler tagged back and forth I tuned out because there's so much "yes it is", "no it isn't" going round and round. Back to Back posts one says who the hell knows, one says no. If we can't answer that question beyond a reasonable doubt then it's difficult to say whether the film was irresponsible or not. If we can answer that question with a decent amount of certainty, I don't see how anyone could fully back the way they chose to script the film.

Sorry to continue something that we're probably never going to reach consensus on.

Alan Smithee wrote: Back to Back posts one says who the hell knows, one says no. If we can't answer that question beyond a reasonable doubt then it's difficult to say whether the film was irresponsible or not. If we can answer that question with a decent amount of certainty, I don't see how anyone could fully back the way they chose to script the film.

Black Hat and I were answering slightly different questions. While there's no evidence that torture alone produced intelligence crucial to the manhunt, some information gathered from detainees who were tortured was likely deemed useful if not necessary to the hunt.

I think it's entirely possible that the film is at one and the same time both accurately depicting the presently known facts about the practice and effectiveness of CIA torture and also still distorting those same facts with the way it chooses (not) to contextualize them dramatically. The biggest problem with the way that torture is portrayed in ZDT seems to me to be inherent in choices that Boal and Bigelow made to create composite characters and streamline the story. There simply wasn't one individual like Maya or Dan who was involved in every step of the process from the early panicked and ineffectual torture to the later careful detective work of painstaking analysis. It's the composite characters colliding with the decision to represent torture that creates the film's confused position on the issue. Torture isn't shown to work. But torturers are. And they are not only not punished for their sins, but they are rewarded with continued faith and centrality to the final manhunt in a way that has nothing to do with what's known about the real thing. It would be as if Jose Rodriguez, vocal CIA torture apologist, were the one running the mission.

At one point in the course of the film Maya remarks that "You can't catch Bin Laden from Washington." But that's exactly what the real-life Jen did, thousands of miles around the world and far removed from the war crimes that tainted some of the information she was using.

I have to second Warren on the Taibbi piece. It was remarkably thoughtful, fair and without any of his shrill tendencies, even coming across as heartfelt at times.

Alan, to clarify, Senators say no, the CIA director out of one side of his mouth said yes, on the other said no. Who are we to believe? What I do know is that there is secrecy regarding all of this and even if it had, I don't believe it would be in the Obama administration's best interests to publicize it. In other words we really can't say with certainty whether it did or not.

From a political standpoint, therein lies my problem with Zero Dark Thirty as a whole, this is a very nuanced, complicated issue that is presented in far too simplistic a fashion.

Black Hat wrote:Alan, to clarify, Senators say no, the CIA director out of one side of his mouth said yes, on the other said no. Who are we to believe?

Well, a number of Democratic Senators on the Intelligence Committee along with Republican John McCain say that no crucial information was produced solely by or first discovered through torture. Both Leon Panetta and the acting CIA director are pretty close to that position too. Yet none of them seem willing to argue that no information tainted by the practice of torture in detainee interrogations was ever used by the Bin Laden team. The only contingent out there that's really saying something much different are some right-wing pundits along with guys like Dick Cheney and former CIA officer Jose Rodriguez.

knives wrote:It just annoys me to see it listed as Zero. Nobody says zero.

Minor correction, but we said it in the Marines all the time. I remember getting chided for saying "O-" instead of zero, actually ("Don't say it like that! That's how they say it in the Army!").

Also, the phrase isn't just "spy speak," as Ebert says in his review. It's used for all sorts of bitchy expressions in the military. Like "Oh, wonderful, PT is tomorrow at zero dark thirty...FML."

(Edit: Non-mobile link): https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/2 ... 2744595456" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Liz Cheney wrote:Just saw Zero Dark Thirty. Excellent film about years of heroism, including in the enhanced interrogation program, that led to bin Laden.

AMalickLensFlare wrote:

knives wrote:It just annoys me to see it listed as Zero. Nobody says zero.

Minor correction, but we said it in the Marines all the time. I remember getting chided for saying "O-" instead of zero, actually ("Don't say it like that! That's how they say it in the Army!").

Also, the phrase isn't just "spy speak," as Ebert says in his review. It's used for all sorts of bitchy expressions in the military. Like "Oh, wonderful, PT is tomorrow at zero dark thirty...FML."

This shouldn't even be an issue: zero is a number; "Oh" is a letter. If you're making a phone call, dialing zero is a different button then dialing "o". There's no way the military would want to create imprecision by using the two words interchangeably.

Or am I misunderstanding the argument?

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:And now Taibbi comes to the fray. At least he doesn't liken her to Leni.

Again, like so many other critics, Taibbi simply wanted Bigelow to make a different movie. His entire thesis rests on the supposed fact that audiences are meant to cheer at the end. Well, I didn't cheer at the end, not only because Bigelow wisely chose not to sensationalize the assassination of Bin Laden, but because the film doesn't even seem to be about reaching that particular goal. It's more about how the lives and attitudes of those who are trying to attain the goal are affected.

Roger Ryan wrote:This shouldn't even be an issue: zero is a number; "Oh" is a letter. If you're making a phone call, dialing zero is a different button then dialing "o". There's no way the military would want to create imprecision by using the two words interchangeably.

Or am I misunderstanding the argument?

They're both used. It's like when you tell someone your phone number and it has a zero in it, you don't always say "zero." I live in Las Vegas and our area code here is 702. I almost always say "seven-oh-two" when giving my number, not "seven-zero-two." I think this is what you mean by "nobody says zero." But in the military, at least in the Marines, we say "zero" with times, but saying "oh" does happen sometimes, particularly in the Army.

Sorry, petty discussion. Not trying to argue about it, just wanted to throw it out there that "zero" is indeed used frequently.

Roger Ryan wrote:

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:And now Taibbi comes to the fray. At least he doesn't liken her to Leni.

Again, like so many other critics, Taibbi simply wanted Bigelow to make a different movie. His entire thesis rests on the supposed fact that audiences are meant to cheer at the end. Well, I didn't cheer at the end, not only because Bigelow wisely chose not to sensationalize the assassination of Bin Laden, but because the film doesn't even seem to be about reaching that particular goal. It's more about how the lives and attitudes of those who are trying to attain the goal are affected.

Well I just heard a co-worker compare this film to Rudy so...

AMalickLensFlare wrote:

knives wrote:It just annoys me to see it listed as Zero. Nobody says zero.

Minor correction, but we said it in the Marines all the time. I remember getting chided for saying "O-" instead of zero, actually ("Don't say it like that! That's how they say it in the Army!").

Also, the phrase isn't just "spy speak," as Ebert says in his review. It's used for all sorts of bitchy expressions in the military. Like "Oh, wonderful, PT is tomorrow at zero dark thirty...FML."

Ah, I come from Navy stock so had only heard it as oh.

dx23 wrote:I saw it this afternoon and was exactly what I expected:a very good movie with a simple glance at how things went in the process of finding and killing Bin Laden. The torture scenes are not glorified or promoted like many have mistakenly said over the net. The film's main problem is maybe not exploring in more detail some of the events that led to the raid of Bin Laden, which I can understand since then it would have been too much to put into a single film and most likely that information still classified. The other problem is that the timeline of the story is a little vague, especially in the beginning, that even with some of the timestamps shown, it was confusing to see how much time had passed from one scene to the next. Other than that, the film was solid by all accounts and the raid scene at the end is a must see for those who have seen how the US went from September 11 to finally killing the mastermind behind the attacks after so much politicking and misleading reasons for war.

I can certainly see why Jessica Chastain was nominated since she did a hell of a job. Still, I found Argo to be a better film, maybe because the source of information has been declassified by the CIA and Affleck had more and better material to work with.

This sums up my feelings pretty well. I was prepared for a lot worse in the torture scenes and found myself wondering "that's it?" at the end. Not to say what was shown wasn't incredibly difficult to watch, but I don't see how a rational person could watch this film and come away with the impression that the film is a blanket endorsement of torture as a viable means of obtaining information, never mind it's role in capturing bin laden. It seems to me than an enterprising junior agent was most important in her digging through the old files that resulted in getting the courier's real name. I saw it with two colleagues and we all came to the same conclusion: Bigelow managed a remarkably dispassionate exegesis of the biggest manhunt in history, made the story riveting, and the final act was mesmerizing and disturbing in how forthright it was. This was a job for all involved. If anything seeing the Agents go in and out of the black sites showed how little "Rah rah" jingoism was really at play here.

I was not a big fan of the Hurt Locker - I felt it was over rated and nothing terribly special. But Zero Dark Thirty is a terrific film, and its strengths lay in how it tread a very fine line in showing the dirty work that went into finding OBL without ever falling pray to flag waving. Even when they return at the end there's no massive celebration - they go straight to work sorting the contraband from the raid. And that raid scene...man oh man. One of the most realistic depictions of modern combat put to film. From the perspective of the soldiers to the muffled double taps from their assault rifles. just riveting stuff.

It's too bad political hacks had to step in and create a completely fabricated storm of fury on both sides of the "torture debate" or whatever you want to call it...most without having even seeing it. Bigelow is 100% right: you simply can't tell this story without it.