Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

When I see ads for Zero Dark Thirty, it seems like they are trying to market the movie as a thriller, not a thriller ala a Mission Impossible movie maybe but an action thriller definitely, when it definitely is not. Oh sure, there's tension, there's suspense, but James Bond this is not. This is a procedural through and through. What it does so well is highlight, in a way, how life isn't like those action movies. No story ever actually ends, not really, not in real life, and real life never offers the kind of closure we want. Even Osama Bin Laden in a body bag isn't the end, not for the men that went in and killed him or the people that did the work of hunting him down. Even when it finally happens, it doesn't feel like a big moment, and in the movie, in a weird way, it is not played as one. It is a moment wrapped up in codewords on the radio and a long trip home, it's seizing the hard drives and the research that is going to go in to looking for what's next. It is sitting alone and crying after everything is all said and done because you have done something big, but you also just spent 12 years of your life doing something, one thing, that you put your whole person into, and now it's all over, and what are you going to do with yourself, and what have you already done to yourself to, sometimes terrible things, and what have you become. 


-Kevin