Zero Dark Thirty

''Zero Dark Thirty'' is a 2012 American thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal. The film dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden, leader of terrorist network Al-Qaeda, after the September 11 attacks. This search leads to the discovery of his compound in Pakistan and the military raid where bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011.

Jessica Chastain stars as Maya, a fictional CIA intelligence analyst, with Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Reda Kateb, Mark Strong, James Gandolfini, Kyle Chandler, Stephen Dillane, Chris Pratt, Édgar Ramírez, Fares Fares, Jennifer Ehle, John Barrowman, Mark Duplass, Harold Perrineau, and Frank Grillo in supporting roles. It was produced by Boal, Bigelow, and Megan Ellison, and independently financed by Ellison's Annapurna Pictures. The film premiered in Los Angeles on December 10, 2012, and had its wide release on January 11, 2013.

''Zero Dark Thirty'' received critical acclaim for its acting, direction, screenplay and editing, and was a box office success, grossing $132 million worldwide. It appeared on 95 critics' top ten lists of 2012. It was also nominated in five categories at the 85th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actress for Chastain, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Editing, which it won in a tie with ''Skyfall''. It earned Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Chastain, who won.

Plot

Maya Harris is a CIA analyst tasked with finding the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In 2003, she is stationed at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan. She and CIA officer Dan Fuller attend the black site interrogations of Ammar (Reda Kateb), a detainee with suspected links to several of the hijackers in the September 11 attacks and who is subjected to approved torture interrogation techniques. Ammar provides unreliable information on a suspected attack in Saudi Arabia, but reveals the name of the personal courier for bin Laden, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Other detainee intelligence connects courier traffic by Abu Ahmed between Abu Faraj al-Libbi and bin Laden. In 2005, Faraj denies knowing about a courier named Abu Ahmed; Maya interprets this as an attempt by Faraj to conceal the importance of Abu Ahmed.

In 2009, Maya's fellow officer and friend Jessica travels to a US base in Afghanistan to meet a Jordanian doctor, highly placed in al-Qaeda, who has offered to become a US spy for $25 million. Instead, he turns out to be a triple agent loyal to al-Qaeda, and Jessica is killed, along with several other CIA officers, when he detonates a suicide vest in what will come to be known as the Camp Chapman attack, the worst attack on CIA personnel in 25 years.

Thomas, an analyst who linked the Abu Ahmed lead, shares with Maya an interrogation of a Jordanian detainee claiming to have buried Abu Ahmed in 2001. Maya learns what the CIA was told five years earlier: Ibrahim Sayeed traveled under the name of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Realizing her lead may be alive, Maya contacts Dan, now a senior officer at the CIA headquarters. She speculates that the CIA's photograph of Ahmed is that of his brother, Habeeb, who was killed in Afghanistan. Maya says that their beards and native clothes make the brothers look alike, explaining the account of Ahmed's "death" in 2001.

A Kuwaiti prince trades the phone number of Sayeed's mother to Dan for a Lamborghini Gallardo Bicolore. Maya and her CIA team in Pakistan use electronic methods to eventually pinpoint a caller in a moving vehicle who exhibits behaviors that delay confirmation of his identity (which Maya calls tradecraft, thus confirming that the subject is likely a senior courier). They track the vehicle to a large urban compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. After gunmen attack Maya while she is in her vehicle, she is recalled to Washington, D.C. as her cover is believed blown.

The CIA puts the compound under surveillance, but obtains no conclusive identification of bin Laden. The President's National Security Advisor tasks the CIA with creating a plan to capture or kill bin Laden. Before briefing President Barack Obama, the CIA director holds a meeting of his senior officers, who estimate that bin Laden is 60–80% likely to be in the compound. Maya, also in the meeting, places her confidence at 100%.

On May 2, 2011, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment flies two stealth helicopters from Afghanistan into Pakistan with members of DEVGRU and the CIA's Special Activities Division to raid the compound. The SEALs gain entry and kill a number of people in the compound, including a man whom they believe is bin Laden. At a U.S. base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, Maya confirms the identity of the corpse.

She boards a military transport back to the U.S., the sole passenger. She is asked where she wants to go and begins to cry.

Cast

CIA

* Jessica Chastain as Maya Harris, a CIA intelligence analyst
* Jason Clarke as Dan Fuller, a CIA intelligence officer
* Jennifer Ehle as Jessica Karley, a senior CIA analyst
* Mark Strong as George Panetta, a senior CIA supervisor
* Kyle Chandler as Joseph Bradley, Islamabad CIA Station Chief
* James Gandolfini as CIA Director
* Harold Perrineau as Jack Fuller, a CIA analyst
* Mark Duplass as Steve Bradley, a CIA analyst
* Fredric Lehne as Fred "The Wolf" Guerrero, a CIA section chief
* John Barrowman as Jeremy Karley, a CIA executive
* Jessie Collins as Debbie Stone, a CIA analyst
* Édgar Ramírez as Larry Handley, a CIA SAD/SOG operative
* Fares Fares as Hakim, a CIA SAD/SOG operative
* Scott Adkins as John Simmons, a CIA SAD/SOG operative
* Jeremy Strong as Thomas, a CIA analyst

US Navy

* Joel Edgerton as Patrick Grayston, DEVGRU (SEAL Team 6) team leader
* Chris Pratt as Justin Lenihan, DEVGRU operator.
* Callan Mulvey as Saber Till, DEVGRU operator.
* Taylor Kinney as Jared Bradley, DEVGRU operator
* Mike Colter as Mike, DEVGRU operator
* Frank Grillo as DEVGRU Commanding officer
* Christopher Stanley as JSOC Commander Vice Admiral Bill McRaven

Other

* Stephen Dillane as National Security Advisor Tom Donilon
* Mark Valley as C-130 pilot
* John Schwab as Deputy National Security Advisor
* Reda Kateb as Ammar, a terrorist who is tortured for information
* Homayoun Ershadi as Hassan Ghul
* Yoav Levi as Abu Farraj al-Libbi
* Ricky Sekhon as Osama bin Laden, leader and founder of Al Qaeda

Production

Titles

The film's working title was ''For God and Country''.No conspiracy: New documents explain Pentagon, CIA cooperation on 'Zero Dark Thirty'
; ''Entertainment Weekly''; August 28, 2012. The title ''Zero Dark Thirty'' was officially confirmed at the end of the film's teaser trailer. Bigelow has explained that "it's a military term for 30 minutes after midnight, and it refers also to the darkness and secrecy that cloaked the entire decade-long mission."

Writing

Bigelow and Boal had initially worked on and finished a screenplay centered on the December 2001 Battle of Tora Bora, and the long, unsuccessful efforts to find Osama bin Laden in the region. The two were about to begin filming when news broke that bin Laden had been killed.

They immediately shelved the film they had been working on and redirected their focus, essentially starting from scratch. "But a lot of the homework I'd done for the first script and a lot of the contacts I made, carried over," Boal remarked during an interview with ''Entertainment Weekly''. He added, "The years I had spent talking to military and intelligence operators involved in counter-terrorism was helpful in both projects. Some of the sourcing I had developed long, long ago continued to be helpful for this version."

Along with painstakingly recreating the historic night-vision raid on the Abbottabad compound, the script and the film stress the little-reported role of the tenacious young female CIA officer who tracked down Osama bin Laden. Screenwriter Boal said that while researching for the film, "I heard through the grapevine that women played a big role in the CIA in general and in this team. I heard that a woman was there on the night of the raid as one of the CIA's liaison officers on the ground – and that was the start of it." He then turned up stories about a young case officer who was recruited out of college, who had spent her entire career chasing bin Laden. Maya's tough-minded, monomaniacal persona, Boal said, is "based on a real person, but she also represents the work of a lot of other women." In December 2014 Jane Mayer of ''The New Yorker'' wrote that "Maya" was modeled in part after CIA officer Alfreda Frances Bikowsky.

Filming

''Zero Dark Thirty'' producers built a real compound in Jordan, based on what they could learn (from diagrams and reporting) about the building where the CIA’s pursuit ended. The production designer—Jeremy Hindle, who had never made a feature film before—was responsible for making the building as real as possible. The cinder blocks with which the building was made, for example, were distressed so that they didn’t look new. Parts of the film were shot at PEC University of Technology in Chandigarh, India. Some parts of Chandigarh were designed to look like Lahore and Abbottabad in Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was found and killed on May 2, 2011. Parts of the film were shot in Mani Majra. Local members of right wing parties protested, expressing anti-bin Laden and anti-Pakistan sentiments as they objected to Pakistani locations being portrayed on Indian soil.
For a lone scene shot in Poland, the city of Gdańsk was reportedly offended for depicting it as a location for the CIA's clandestine and dark operations.

National security expert Peter Bergen, who reviewed an early cut of the film as an unpaid adviser, said at the time that the film's torture scenes "were overwrought". Boal said they were "toned down" in the final cut.

Music

Alexandre Desplat composed and conducted the film's score. The score, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, was released as a soundtrack album by Madison Gate Records on December 19, 2012.

Marketing

Electronic Arts promoted ''Zero Dark Thirty'' in its video game '' Medal of Honor: Warfighter'' by offering downloadable maps of locations depicted in the film. Additional maps for the game were made available on December 19, to coincide with the film's initial release. Electronic Arts donates $1 to nonprofit organizations that support veterans for each ''Zero Dark Thirty'' map pack sold.

Release

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 91% based on 302 reviews, with an average rating of 8.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Gripping, suspenseful, and brilliantly crafted, ''Zero Dark Thirty'' dramatizes the hunt for Osama bin Laden with intelligence and an eye for detail." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 95 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It was the site's best-reviewed film of 2012. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

''New York Times'' critic Manohla Dargis, who designated the film a ''New York Times'' critics' pick, said that the film "shows the dark side of that war. It shows the unspeakable and lets us decide if the death of Bin Laden was worth the price we paid."

Richard Corliss's review in ''Time'' magazine called it "a fine" movie and "a police procedural on the grand scale", saying it "blows ''Argo'' out of the water". Calling ''Zero Dark Thirty'' "a milestone in post-Sept. 11 cinema", critic A. O. Scott of ''The New York Times'' listed the film at number six of the top 10 films of 2012.

''The New Yorker'' film critic David Denby lauded the filmmakers for their approach. "The virtue of ''Zero Dark Thirty''," wrote Denby, "is that it pays close attention to the way life does work; it combines ruthlessness and humanity in a manner that is paradoxical and disconcerting yet satisfying as art." But Denby faulted the filmmakers for getting lodged on the divide between fact and fiction.

Roger Ebert of the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' gave the film three stars out of four. He believed the "opening scenes are not great filmmaking", but Ebert thought ''Zero Dark Thirty'' eventually proved itself with the quiet determination of Chastain's performance and a gripping portrayal of the behind-the-scenes detail that led to bin Laden's death.

Top ten lists

''Zero Dark Thirty'' was listed on many critics' top ten lists. According to Metacritic the film appeared on 95 critics' top ten lists of 2012, 17 of which placed the film at No. 1.

* 1st – Richard Roeper
* 1st – David Denby, ''The New Yorker'' (tied with ''Lincoln'')
* 1st – Lisa Schwarzbaum, ''Entertainment Weekly''
* 1st – Michael Phillips, ''Chicago Tribune''
* 1st – Ann Hornaday, ''The Washington Post''
* 1st – Scott Foundas, ''Village Voice''
* 1st – Mary Pols, ''Time''
* 1st – David Edelstein, ''New York''
* 1st – Peter Knegt & Nigel M. Smith, ''Indiewire''
* 1st – Christopher Orr, ''The Atlantic''
* 1st – Keith Phipps, ''The A.V. Club''
* 2nd – Peter Travers, ''Rolling Stone''
* 2nd – Eric Kohn, ''Indiewire''
* 2nd – Stephanie Zacharek, Film.com
* 2nd – Joshua Rothkopf, ''Time Out New York''
* 2nd – A.A. Dowd and Ben Kenigsberg, ''Time Out Chicago''
* 2nd – Noel Murray, ''The A.V. Club''
* 2nd – Gregory Ellwood, ''Hitfix''
* 2nd – Scott Mantz, ''Access Hollywood''
* 2nd – James Berardinelli, ''Reelviews''
* 3rd – Stephen Holden, ''The New York Times''
* 3rd – Ty Burr, ''The Boston Globe''
* 3rd – Betsy Sharkey, ''Los Angeles Times''
* 3rd – Mick LaSalle, ''San Francisco Chronicle''
* 3rd – Elizabeth Weitzman, ''New York Daily News''
* 3rd – Bill Goodykoontz, ''The Arizona Republic''
* 3rd – Lou Lumenick, ''New York Post''
* 3rd – Anne Thompson & Caryn James, ''IndieWire''
* 3rd – Tasha Robinson, ''The A.V. Club''
* 4th – Andrew O'Hehir, ''Salon.com''
* 4th – Glenn Kenny''
* 4th – Marlow Stern, ''The Daily Beast''
* 5th – Owen Gleiberman, ''Entertainment Weekly''
* 5th - Christy Lemire, Associated Press
* 5th – Drew McWeeny, ''HitFix''
* 5th – Todd McCarthy, ''The Hollywood Reporter''
* 5th – Kyle Smith, ''New York Post''
* 6th – Richard Corliss, ''Time''
* 6th – A.O. Scott, ''The New York Times''
* 7th – Kevin Jagernauth, ''IndieWire''
* 7th – Lisa Kennedy, ''The Denver Post''
* 7th – Alison Willmore, ''The A.V. Club''
* 8th – Scott Tobias, ''The A.V. Club''
* 9th – Keith Uhlich, ''Time Out New York''
* 9th – Joe Neumaier, ''New York Daily News''
* 10th – Steven Rea, ''The Philadelphia Inquirer''
* 10th – Dana Stevens, ''Slate''
* Top 10 (ranked alphabetically) – Richard Lawson, ''The Atlantic''
* Top 10 (listed alphabetically) – Manohla Dargis, ''The New York Times''
* Top 10 (ranked alphabetically) – Calvin Wilson, ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch''
* Top 10 (listed alphabetically) – Joe Morgenstern, ''The Wall Street Journal''
* Best of 2012 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – Kenneth Turan, ''Los Angeles Times''

In 2016, ''Zero Dark Thirty'' was voted the 57th greatest film to be released since 2000 in a critics' poll conducted by the BBC
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