(15A, general release, 157 minutes)
*****

Director: Kathryn Bigelow. Stars: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong.

Before it was even released in America, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty was incensing critics on the left and right. Some Republicans claimed it was pro-Obama propaganda, and were outraged by plans (which did not materialise) to release the film in America on the eve of last November’s Presidential election. Liberals, on the other hand, were deeply disturbed by two crucial interrogation scenes, and by what they saw as Zero Dark Thirty’s implication that torture had played a key part in the hunt for Bin Laden. There’ve been protests outside cinemas showing the movie, and even attempts to dissuade Academy members from voting it into Oscar contention.

It seems to me that if you’re incensing Republicans and Democrats, you must be doing something right. And I think Zero Dark Thirty has attracted such a storm of controversy not because it has an agenda about America’s response to 9/11, but because it addresses the subject at all.

Bigelow’s film makes an explicit link to the September 11 attacks in its opening moments, as chilling recordings of people trapped in the World Trade Center are played over a black screen. We then jump forward two years to a dank room in an American military compound where a prisoner called Ammar (Reda Kateb) is being interrogated.
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