"Bigelow has hamstrung herself by not committing to a viewpoint. This is a by the numbers, cold, emotionally inert, just the "facts" procedural drama that is just barely a step above an episode of Law & Order."
"I was pretty upset that Bigelow got snubbed by the Academy.... until I actually SAW the film. It felt like a really good TV movie, but Jessica Chastain's phony and forced performance drags it down."
And I strongly disagree with the many positive reviews:
"Chastain makes Maya as vivid as a bloodshot eye. Her porcelain skin, delicate features and feminine attire belie the steel within."
"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."
The characters all seemed shallow and the directing felt empty and basic. I had recently seen Jessica Chastain in The Debt and this was exactly the same role. A young woman government agent trying to compete in a man's world, hunting down a notorious war criminal who has eluded everyone else for years. Sometimes I could almost forget which movie I was watching. None of the characters were explored in any depth and none of them were particularly likable. I know this makes me a bad person since the movie is based on true events but one of the characters was so obnoxious to me that I felt relieved when she died (even though it was more than a little predictable). There was seldom any background music, so most of the movie was just bland shots of people doing stuff that is unclear why you should care about it. Inane conversations, office jobs, and paperwork.
I felt like I was watching some kind of acting exercise. Like some acting students were given some scenes and asked to practice what they'd been learning in class. Raise the stakes (which means raise your voice at the right time I guess), pace the scene well (which means put in plenty of pauses), and don't forget to react to your scene partner! I guess what I'm trying to say is that it didn't feel real at all. It doesn't feel like any great amount of effort was put into making this a good movie. It feels like making it was a chore. It's just Oscar bait. "Okay, we're supposed to make a movie now about capturing Bin Laden and stuff. Might as well get to it. I heard we'll win an Oscar for it." You've got all those weird detached speeches that you hear in the trailers. Like "I'm bad news. I'm not your friend..." and "...there's just us. And we are failing." They sound so weird when they're actually in the movie because people don't actually talk like that. They only make sense in the context of the trailer when played over that Clint Mansell / Kevin MacLeod sounding music. And what's up with the scene where Joel Edgerton is asked what convinced him and he gestures toward Maya and says "her confidence"? Is there a joke there? Is she supposed to look not confident? I can't really tell, but I think the audience is supposed to assume that.
So anyway, yeah. What a pretentious load of bull.
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