The hollywood sycophants are already drooling all over the movie, hence the ratings. However it is amazing how quickly people forget that the creators betrayed the soldiers they were embedded with, while researching 'The Hurt Locker'. The soldiers portrayed in the movie behaved nothing like real soldiers - the creators claimed artistic license while dishonoring those who were kind enough to allow the civilians an unvarnished view into their world.

This movie is much the same, again with Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal cashing in on the lives of those who give so much, so the rest of us may live out our lives in a safer world. Critics and audiences will rave over this movie because it is "real and gritty" - despite the fact they are lucky enough to know nothing about the world the movie claims to portray. This movie is nothing more than a sycophantic attempt by media liberals to burnish President Obama's image, while cashing in on the hard work and sacrifices of those who put their lives on the line for the rest of us. hollywood, Kathryn and Mark should be ashamed. The least they could've done is give an accurate portrayal of what happened.… Expand

First of all, I'm always amazed at the number of 10 and 0 reviews. People really need to stop and think about what a 10 and what a 0 implies. Whatever, just my two cents on user reviews. ---- As for the movie, I felt like giving it a 4, but that's mostly because my expectations were let down. I'm not sure what the recent love affair with Kathryn Bigelow is all about? ZDT is far from extraordinary. Everything about this movie (script, acting, direction, cinematography--everything) is smart, faultless, and safe. As such, it's hard to say anything bad about the film, yet, that's exactly why it fails to stand out. It evokes no emotion and little controversy over such a controversial topic--it's moot art. ...now I'll go read the reviews to see why I'm wrong.… Expand

Disappointing. In the rush to get a script out, Mark Boal and the producers never found a strong, coherent story to tell. Instead, there's a torture act, an intelligence-procedural act, and an action act that do not cohere.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Simply outstanding. Kathryn Bigelow, now that she's made the character-driven Hurt Locker and this phenomenally-paced thriller, has positioned herself as the dramatic chronicler of record in modern American warfare. No, she's not covering this stuff comprehensively, but the dramatic choices she makes, the slices she and her writers have focused on, so effectively tell the story of this era that I was thinking that we're lucky to have her as the credits of ZDT rolled. Chastain, the chameleon, is terrific in the film and will rightly be praised through the awards season. But I want to give special praise to Jason Clarke, who I've appreciated so thoroughly in Brotherhood and The Chicago code - he was an inspired casting choice. The enhanced interrogation sequences are technically no more difficult to watch than similar scenes in other films (most recently Safe House), but Clarke's ability to represent the interrogator's calculated pinballing between brutality and humanity is powerful. It's not a short movie, but I was riveted throughout. My audience gave the film a modest round of applause. I think they were more stunned by what they had just seen than anything else.… Expand

Zero Dark Thirty is a step down in almost every way from the Hurt Locker. Almost no suspense, a main character that has no depth, and a somewhat slow and sluggish first half. I was hoping the first 2 hours were more like the last 30 minutes.

I went to see this movie last night. The theater was packed. I watched disjointed torture which dehumanized both the prisoner and the one's doing the torture. They painted the Obama administration as soft, so what else is new? They never delved into what makes these CIA agents tick? We watched 7 years leading up to the killing of bin Laden. They never answered why they killed instead of captured him nor was there any suspense. I know about as much as what happened then as I do now. The professional critics are out of their mind as no one said a word leaving the theater. As PT Barnum said...There is a sucker born every minute. The subject matter is what attracted us. You learn nothing new. Just a waste of time with the camera jumping all over the place. Yuk!… Expand

A Cinematic masterpiece with the technical and emotional skill of a cubist painting, Zero Dark Thirty is a genre-creating film that is touchstone of modern cinema.

This film bolsters the false impression that the US's engaging in torture, though distasteful, is necessary by painting a false linkage between torture of "terror suspects" and the locating of Osama bin Laden. No information leading to the location of bin Laden was obtained via torture.

I think we all remember 9/11 and the announcement that Bin Laden had been killed, but none of us knew the true order of events in between and the granular detail of the missions. Zero Dark Thirty provides a truly gripping account of the ten year manhunt for the most dangerous man of our time. This is her best work to date and its honest dialogue and compelling acting allow the audience to feel everything that anyone involved experienced.… Expand

First thing's first: Jessica Chastain is smoking hot. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, how is the rest of the movie? Pretty damn good. I would compare Zero Dark Thirty to a film like Inception in that you will be amazed by the sheer film-making talent and attention to detail that is on display here, but the lack of characters to latch on to will leave some viewers cold. The only character that you will feel any affinity towards is the protagonist Maya, and even she doesn't exactly come off as loveable. However this shortcoming is more than offset by the movie's strengths. The script is tight, the mood is often tense, and even though you know how it all ends, you find yourself completely sucked in by the engrossing events. The only reason I can think of that anyone would give this film a negative review is if they have something against America. Unfortunately I've read numerous forums and reviews and there are tons of bitter people who fill the net with their anti-American dogma instead of simply evaluating the film as a piece of artistic media. But if you're willing to set your prejudices aside and can appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making this movie, you'll be blown away.… Expand

The film has no real plot or development, it almost feels like Prometheus it never gives good reasoning for anything, its huge time gaps arent confusing but makes it even more tedious. Movie skips through time and just presents situation without any background information like the audience is supposed to know everything to do with everyone and every location. The torture wasnt bad, depending on your tolerance, and it was definitely not a pro-Obama political film. The film is just about Maia and her arrogance and her acting bothered me, great, but vague. Film has tons of plot holes and mistakes yet the critics love it once again.… Expand

The first bad movie of 2013, this movie was so hard to watch. The only reason I can find as to why the critics are in love with this movie is because of what the movie itself is about. The man was a monster, the movie doesn't do the act any justice. I understand they put this together out of the information available, quite frankly if this is how it went down it was a very sloppy mission. This movie serves more as an attempt at Sony trying to cash in on the monsters death, I honestly cannot see any other reason for them to award this movie with such high regard. I would not recommend this movie to anyone, and it's ok to dislike a movie like this and be patriotic and against all forms of terror at the same time, Go Watch Something Else!… Expand

God, punishing me for what ? I would like to look at it as an ordinary film, but unfortunately it is filmed to order the Pentagon and intelligence services, and that it is hell to feel. This is not a movie, but propaganda. From Mrs. perhaps you do not want to see anything .

If your a red blooded patriotic American and not freaked out by the sight of terrorists having a little water dribbled on their face your going to love this film. If your thin skinned ACLU dues paying liberal your still going to love this film, (but for all the wrong reasons.) If you are squeamish at the sight of intense violence you might have to cover your eyes for big chunks of this film but see it anyway because its that great. Adapting a major historical event (especially one shrouded in classified information) to the big screen and making it totally plausible and so compelling you don't want it's 2 hours and 40 minutes to end is a minor miracle. I'll pay full fare to see it again this weekend.… Expand

Excellent movie! hands down the best movie of 2012. full of suspense with a great performance from Jessica Chastain and wonderful direction from kathryn bigelow

A real let down. I'm a sucker for a Black Hawk Down, Hurt Locker, Etc. type of movie. This is none of those and dont be fuled by the complete bogus marketing. A complete bore through the first 2 hours with a few explosions thrown in to keep the audience interested. The complete lack of character development including the CIA operatives, The Terrorists, and the 15 minutes of seal team footage was very surprising. Its basically 2 hours of a CIA operative pullering her hair out in front of a computer follwed by 15 minutes of explosions, and 15 minutes of seal team six. The ending was so hear it comes and there it goes. I have no idea why the critics gave this such high ratings.… Expand

Its pretty obvious after seeing this film that Kathryn have some real issues with men. All you hvae seen his latest(all) movies. They are centered mens world. She is trying so hard to show that " fuxx man" attitude. In this flick example .. notice the head star pushing the negotiator and in many scenes shes dominating the male cia agents. its just disturbing to see how he puts things, theres like 2 lesbian cia agents running the show. and most laughable part in the movie when she writes numbers on the window and acts like a baby.. AND then comes the father figure, after she have told him " this motherxxxxx..." wuuuut?? i was laughing so hard.. And what,, she maked those navy seals operators look so stupid.... NOOOOOO.... ok. its not a bad movie. but bigelows personal issues just make it little ankward to watch.… Expand

Amazing . This is not a triumphant story in their telling, but it is one uncommonly freighted with the weight of history.Like the fictional Clarice Starling in "The Silence of the Lambs,'' Maya is a consummate professional who brilliantly performs her job in an often hostile work environment.

TL;DR Brainless propaganda that will have you clapping to the national anthem with a hard-on for Merica and freedom.

Good action movie, that part is undeniable. However, the premise of the movie is locked in a struggle with pure fantasy and is greatly over exaggerated, obviously to make for Hollywood standards.

I've encountered this movie in a sneak preview and since people usually visit a cinema to get a bit of distance to reality and want to get entertained or even touched, this movie was possibly the worst choice for this event, especially as it was the 1000th sneak of my cinema and expectations were high. 16 friends were with me on this evening, 5 of them left during the movie for various reasons like too graphical expression of senseless violence like torture scenes or because they lost the struggle against the agony caused of boredom.

On a neutral point of view the topic of this movie is possibly only interesting to US americans where the documentary style of this movie might serve as the rehabilitation of a national trauma. To the rest of the world the topic is what it is. He lived, he blew stuff up, he died. Wheres a movie in that exept for Michael Bay? It's good stuff if you are into documentaries where you expect it to be boring but it fails as a movie.

The 95 metacritic make me feel as if it's opposit day. It's not rationally comprehensible since this movie lacks so much that a good movie has to offer. Not because of the topic or the documentary style of the movie but of the bad craftmanship the director and producers showed. Worst of all was, since we probably all know most of the events that were depicted in this movie and especially how the movie must end, the real torture that needs to be criticized is the movie itself since especially the last scene appeared as if it tries to reinvent dullness. For the major part of this movie it is just plane boring. There is no such thing as an arc of suspense and the only emotion the movie manages to create is disgust right at the beginning when you partake in the torture scenes. I actually expected/feared that they also would have show how a man get's his head severed or his throat cut in some dark shag in afghanistan in every painful detail. Luckily this didn't happen. Yet on the climax of the movie - the final scene - the director desperately struggled in an attempt, to make a scene artificially suspenseful, where no suspense could ever be found and in the very last ending scene so stagy, that the most natural reaction you have to this cheesy attempt of pathos is to roll your eyes like an eightball on its way to the pocket. To me this is the most overrated movie i encountered on metacritic for one reason only: because americans feel like this movie has to matter because of the subject it deals with. To everyone else it is revealed as the waste of lifetime it actually is where the strongest emotion it created was the feeling of relief when you finally could step out of the cinema and proudly say "Yes! I managed to endure that movie!"

Still i would give this movie one point for its excellent scenery. Everything appeared impressively authentic up to the house and the stealth helicopters. This was extraordinarily well done yet it isn't by far enough to turn it into an impressing film itself.. or even a mediocre one.… Expand

Not impressed, as I was not impressed with Hurt Locker. Bigelow goes through the motions but does not tell a compelling story. What are compelling in both movies are the topics, and that seems to give a boost to the buzz about the movies. I am confused why this movie receiving such high marks from critics. As for Jessica Chastain, nothing wrong with the performance: just not much for her to do.[ I haven't seen all nominees, but female performance I remember enjoying the most this year: Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises.]… Expand

Great film, but I wouldn't put it past Hollywood to have had its screenplay exaggerated and all--it's events don't match up to the ones that occurred in real life. It is effective as entertainment though.

After seeing this film all I can say is.... wow. She knocked it out of the park again. Kathryn Bigelow created a drama that involves almost the entire war on terror, although may seem dragged out to some, seems totally necessary to me. Two wars, 6,616 American troops killed, and one mastermind of terror brought down. The scenes of torture may seem too intense for some but are needed to convey the action took to bring down this man. Jessica Chastain gives an Academy award worthy portrayal of the CIA agent Maya that will leave an impact on you. I seriously recommend that any American who was impacted over the last decade by 9/11 or the war on terror to go see this. It will put things into prospective.

Best film of 2012 by far and away.… Expand

This movie is pure propaganda and celebrates the assassination of an unarmed man without a chance of trail. Due process is what America was built on and this film tries to undermine this by getting the American citizenry to accept that sacrificing this moral foundation is okay. This film is nothing but propaganda and is as far from a good movie as possible.

Trivialized a very serious subject and made it look outright silly. At the end of the movie you feel like killing Osama was a personal errand run by the analyst. And if the movie was meant to focus on the emotions and experiences of the brilliant lady analyst behind the whole operation, it totally failed it's intent as well cos there is no character development and the actress was also a misfit for the role. Whole movie lacked intensity and depth… Expand

The hollywood sycophants are already drooling all over the movie, hence the ratings. However it is amazing how quickly people forget that the creators betrayed the soldiers they were embedded with, while researching 'The Hurt Locker'. The soldiers portrayed in the movie behaved nothing like real soldiers - the creators claimed artistic license while dishonoring those who were kind enough to allow the civilians an unvarnished view into their world. This movie is much the same, again with Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal cashing in on the lives of those who give so much, so the rest of us may live out our lives in a safer world. Critics and audiences will rave over this movie because it is "real and gritty" - despite the fact they are lucky enough to know nothing about the world the movie claims to portray. This movie is nothing more than a sycophantic attempt by media liberals to burnish President Obama's image, while cashing in on the hard work and sacrifices of those who put their lives on the line for the rest of us. hollywood, Kathryn and Mark should be ashamed. The least they could've done is give an accurate portrayal of what happened… Expand

A perfect movie. Tension is built thorough the entire movie so that by the time the last 30 minutes is left, your heart will be pounding.Great acting all around, Chastain is wonderful, best actor win for sure, wait and see.

Starts and ends well but the core of the film is mediocrity at its finest in film form. The problem with this film is that, Bigelow and Boal want to say so much and yet, they confine themselves too a two and a half hour window. Boal shows just how much a fish out of water he really is here. The script is a tempermental mess, introducing one character only too abandon them for another as soon as any character development begins to form. The story itself jumps from plot point to plot point with out any real meat between the set peices. The closest comparison would be a Michael Bay film, in terms of the organization of the film. You see their is really no plot development, no actual emotional connection to anything one sees in this film. Instead, what you get is a series of events held together with padding. Like Bay it seems Boal wrote the big set pieces first and then linked them through shoddy narrative structure. The set peices mind you are amazing, but everything in between is just lazy filler. At least Bay tries to infuse his filler with some energy but ZDT, nope. The padding is a barren waste off missed opportunity. Jessica Chaistain is the most evident in this sense of dull acting. She just stands around and looks mildly discomforted by everything. Mark Strong and Jason Clarke are the only ones who really do any acting. In fact there are only two scenes that really have any life too them, the first being the one where Strong's character, George is first introduced. There is fire there is energy, life and then... Bigelows drops it all and goes back to morose mild discomfort until the last chunk of the film. The end of the film is really well done. And that is where you see that beyond the ending, this film is simply just another Body of Lies. It's almost as if Boal wrote this first, in a flurry off maddening genius and Bigelow directed five minutes after he handed it too her and then they wrote the rest of the film. All their energy gone into that last forty minutes, Though as much as I lambaste this film, considering the overly generous praise given to it (especially considering the high quality of The Hurt Locker), it does present an interesting premise. It would have made one hell of a miniseries! Boal even separates the individual acts almost as if they were episodes. And Bigelow directs each act as if it is an episode of an HBO miniseries, yet sadly, its not. Instead we have a bloated film, from a writer who couldn't figure out how to write this story beyond scripting the Abbotobad raid. It's a great story. It's just on the wrong screen.… Expand