The Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller “Zero Dark Thirty,” which comes out Wednesday, has already received several Best Picture awards from film critics’ groups, including the one in New York. But that’s no reason not to see it.
Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal’s follow-up to their Oscar winner “The Hurt Locker” is far superior to the earlier film — a gripping work but also a painstakingly detailed one that is more intellectually and morally serious about the War on Terror than any other Hollywood film yet made.
It lays out how a female CIA agent, named “Maya” and played by Jessica Chastain, pieced together information from a variety of sources, including al Qaeda prisoners who had been waterboarded, to learn of the existence of the bin Laden courier who ultimately led to his boss’s death.
Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
This scene from “Zero Dark Thirty” was made possible by the waterboarding of terrorists.
AP
“Zero Dark Thirty” is so drenched in procedural detail that its message may appear ambiguous at first glance, and the hacks are already calling it a “Rorschach test” that will confirm whatever view of torture you held going into the theater.
It isn’t. Not if you’re paying attention.
After seeing it, I can report that it is a clear vindication for the Bush administration’s view of the War on Terror. Moreover, “ZD30” subtly presents President Obama and by extension the entire Democratic establishment and its supporters in the media as hindering the effort to find bin Laden by politicizing harsh interrogation techniques and striking a pose against them that was naive at best.
Since the film is based on unpublished interviews with primary sources, it is unusually difficult to fact-check. But as information about the reality behind the story emerges, so far “ZD30” is standing up factually and is consistent with relevant statements by former CIA Director Leon Panetta and lawmakers with access to classified information about the raid.
The left is alarmed. Glenn Greenwald, without even having seen the film, wrote a piece headlined, “Zero Dark Thirty: New Torture-Glorifying Film Wins Raves,” then finished up by comparing Bigelow to (of course) Hitler’s favorite director Leni Riefenstahl.
Does “ZD30” glorify torture? No, because no one is tortured in it. The worst procedure shown is waterboarding, and while this is an extremely unpleasant process (it’s not even easy to watch a movie simulation of it), it isn’t torture.
Any reasonable definition of torture must exclude procedures that sane people would undergo on a lark. Journalists such as Kaj Larsen and Christopher Hitchens have volunteered to be waterboarded in exchange for nothing more than a cocktail-party anecdote and some copy. (Indeed, Larsen paid $800 for the privilege.) A mixed-martial-arts trainer named Ed Clay volunteered to be waterboarded because he was upset about the general tenor of discussion during a Republican presidential debate and wanted to prove something or other.
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