Zero Dark Thirty (2013)

This movie could be re-titled: "The CIA--The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly".

I should start out by saying that I do not have blood thirst for Bin Laden, never did, and so maybe there are essential things about the telling of this story, which is how the CIA found him and how the raid on his house was conducted, with all the details of terrorism in the Al Queda neighborhood occurred in the intervening years between 9/11 and his ultimate demise, and the importance of them to the American people are lost on me.  You don't have to convince me that these are bad people.  I also believe there are a lot of committed people working in parts of the world where it is very dangerous to be an American and the color of your skin makes you stand out in a way that you cannot hide. 

The part I have trouble with is watching it happen.  Jessica Chastain gives a compelling performance as a female CIA agent who has essentially given over her young adulthood to the effort to find Bin Laden.  The point is brought home late in the movie when someone asks her what else she has worked on, and this is it.  So success means a lot when you have dedicated a decade of your life to it.

The problem I have, once I got past the torture at the beginning of the movie, is that it just didn't hold my interest the whole way through--which is very long--perhaps some aggressive editing could have made this a more viewer friendly movie, but maybe the story is too complex to tell in a movie format.  Good, but not great.