Pun Salad

Why yes, we did watch two Kyle Chandler movies in a row. Good catch. Also, another Oscar nominee for Best Picture. (Nominated for five Oscars total, but only winning for "Sound Editing".)

And you probably already know the general story: it's the based-on-fact story of how Osama bin Laden was tracked down and killed. Spanning many years, the focus of the story is "Maya", a young woman recruited out of high school by the CIA (they do that?) Her entire career has been about bin Laden. She's (variously) profane, obsessed, shrill, egotistical, and abrasive. And one of her colleagues calls her "[adjectival form of a very bad word] nuts." But (as you know) she was also effective and correct.

It's an effective, gritty, spy sorta-thriller, with the extra bonus that it's all sorta true.

The controversy around the movie is almost more interesting than the movie itself. (See Wikipedia for starters.) Mostly it swirls around the movie's portrayal of what the bed-wetters call "torture" and the euphemizers call "enhanced interrogation techniques"; what was done, who was it done to, and did we get critical information as a result? Lefties go (predictably) ballistic at any suggestion that "torture works".

Michael J. Morell, acting CIA Director when the movie came out, wrote a letter that criticized Zero Dark Thirty for creating an "impression" about the techniques' effectiveness that was "false". But, like a good spook bureaucrat, his wording is ambiguous. Leon Panetta, CIA Director from 2009-2011, claimed otherwise. It's a sensitive topic, but given the intense political pressure, I'd tend to bet on the "hell, yes, it was effective" side.