THIS MOVIE WAS SO BAD I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE!!

When it comes to units and missions like this, people expect it to be as realistic as possible. This wasn't even close. The actual SEALs that did the real mission condemned this film profusely.

Dont waste your time. Go watch Zero Dark Thirty instead. Or better yet, read the book No Easy Day for a first hand account.

*Zero Dark Thirty*

AWESOME. Go see it asap

Way to be a stereotypical critic, espousing a false reality that doesn't exist. Bigelow's movie was boring with a bad story and poorly acted. Chastain's portrayal was worse than a 90210 actors portrayal merely because she was emotionless and pointless to the plot.

Zero Dark Thirty sucked as it failed as both a documentary and a fictionary war story.

Zero Dark Thirty was a discombobulated film which left me wondering why it is getting so many glowing reviews. It wasn't a bad film, but it certainly wasn't great and deserving of all the praise heaped upon it. There were certainly interesting aspects of intelligence gathering efforts but it still it seemed more like watching a documentary than a movie. It was just plain bland. The torture scenes were benign in my opinion, but were just plain too long.

Seal Team Six is a better film on a much smaller budget. Better acting, tighter story and full of actual characters. It felt more compelling and emotional. The tie-ins with the actual government/POTUS footage worked quite well. I have no idea why showing the towers coming down is referred to as being "exploitative" in this review here. It happened and we've all seen the images of it happening countless times so why is a few seconds of seeing it in a movie about getting the mastermind behind it considered bad taste? "They came out guns blazing like a video game" says this review? I found both raids at the end to be fairly similar so that comment seemed more of an extra knock at ST6 to pump up the contrived ZDT gushing.

I think Zero Dark Thirty has gotten a bad rap for being 'pro-torture'. Part of what makes the movie so brilliant is it's ambiguity and neutral morality. Bigelow assumes a mature audience that is willingy to come to it's own conclusions in regards to historical War on Terror practices, without the need for heavy-handed editorializing like an Oliver Stone flick. That being said, you and many other critics and commentators are inaccurately describing the opening interrogation scene. You wrote:

"Ammar, the source who endures the most punishment we see, gives up al-Kuwaiti not when he's in shackles, but after, when he's plyed with food, fresh air and cigarettes."

SPOILER WARNING

Dan and Maya are interrogating Ammar, an Al Qaeda money man, at a CIA black site. Despite attempts at coercion, Dan fails to elicit information regarding the Saudi Group that could have possibly prevented the Khobar attack in 2004. So in this respect, the interrogators fail. However, soon thereafter, Maya devises a ruse: because Ammar had been brutalized by prolonged sleep deprivation, she believes Ammar can be bluffed and manipulated. Memory loss, Dan later tells us, is a consequence of sleep deprivation. So Maya and Dan inform Ammar that he had coughed up information after he was kept awake for 96 hours, helping to prevent the Khobar attack. As a result, Ammar feels comfortable talking over a meal because he is under the false impression that he has already spilled operational secrets to his interrogators and that his interrogators are happy with him. During this lunch, when Ammar hesitates naming Al Qaeda colleagues who were with him in Afghanistan, Dan reminds Ammar that he could always go eat with someone else and "hang [Ammar] back up to the ceiling." Right after Dan says this, Ammar gives up some war names, including that of Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti, the Bin Laden courier who would eventually lead the CIA to the now-famous compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

I wouldn't say that this opening scene is positively an argument for the efficacy of torture, but you didn't accurately complete the narrative in your comments.