Although they were suspicious, it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up, and they considered it worth the risk. Climate & Environment. This is perhaps one of the best examples of how accurate Zero Dark Thirty is to history. He asks how she joined the Agency and her reply is along the lines of: "I was recruited out of High School." When he asks for more detail she says she's not allowed to say. The scene where the CIA agents in Pakistan are accosted by two armed men on motorbikes is based on a genuine incident, but in real life the CIA officer killed them both. Zero Dark Thirty's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is one of the finest available on Blu-ray.This is a track of incredible nuance, heavy bass, and precision elements alike, all played . Michael Scheuer has in recent years espoused conspiracy theories, and called on then president Donald Trump to impose martial law after he lost the 2020 election. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. A 2 hour 46 minute YAWN!!! Why does Bigelow show only ones associated with Al Qaeda? Zero Dark Thirty was released just 19 months after the raid in Pakistan: It waded knowingly into a fraught slice of history just as that history was taking shape, and played a role, however hard . The latter was described as one of the CIAs top experts on al-Qaida and was killed in the Camp Chapman attack in 2009. Even the hostage-takers have their reasons. Maya is apparently horrified by the practice, but soon gets sufficiently accustomed to torture that when a prisoner begs for mercy, she flings back at him the line that hes in charge of his own fate (i.e., if he gives the desired information, hell be spared). Edit, The focus of the scene was that there were three women in the house, meaning that there had to be at least three men, one of whom was never seen. Silhouette of a woman by iStockphoto. Hollywood Catches Zero Dark Fever. It also provided valuable intelligence; terrorists the world over are notorious for keeping extensive records for everything they do. Anticipating that Panetta would not be impressed with the how he was going to look on screen, Gandolfini has said, I sent a note to Leon saying, Im very sorry about everything. . Its an exciting, skillfully crafted, vigorously realized film, but also a renunciation of the fuller possibilities of cinema in favor of a dully narrowed, debased op-ed political discourse of pros and cons, that enters the public debate by the rigorous exclusion of sex and ideology, intimate desires and grandiose dreams, family and friends, secrets and lies, the constantly streaming phantasmagoria of inner life. National Security Advisor (Stephen Dillane) - John Brennan. Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 American political action-thriller film. So declares the CIA Station Head in Pakistan about a new arrival in 2003, a "CIA targeter and subject-matter expert," Maya (Jessica Chastain). For one, Mayas friend Jessica, who dies in a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, seemingly refers to Jennifer Lynne Matthews. Though viewers know that the Navy SEAL raid on the Abbottabad compound was successfulmeaning that bin Laden was killed and the soldiers got out safe and soundthe staging of it, filled with twists, turns, pitfalls, near-misses, is done with heart-pounding energy, alternating between views of the soldiers and their own point of view, through their infrared night-vision goggles. Alternatively, she could have joined the armed forces straight out of high school and then joined the CIA from there.For the position 'Maya' held in the agency (a Targeter), it's extremely unlikely a high school student would be recruited. Zero Dark Thirty. All rights reserved. Not all of the heroes that night were human. The usual advantages of portraying an actual living person didn't apply to Jessica Chastain with her role as Maya in " Zero Dark Thirty ." The woman responsible for . The CIA ended up pulling him from the country. Bigelow, no orthodox Bazinian, deploys a familiar, conventional repertory of the techniques of coded Hollywood realism, including rapid-fire editing and hand-held cameras, to ratchet up excitement, involvement, identification, suspense, which the storys own gaps and elisions undercut, throwing the viewer into the position of having been entertained by things that really arent much fun and rooting for things that make a viewer then wonder why. Wait until they go through college so they don't have to waste a bunch of time training them. Kyle Chandlers Joseph Bradley, who oversees Mayas investigative work in Islamabad, is closely modeled on a man named Jonathan Banks, who was the CIA station chief in Pakistan. Is there really a Muslim guy who works for the CIA? Condition: This movie is the true story of the hunt for Usama Bin Laden. Chances are she did something in high school that caught the CIAs attention. Why weren't the occupants of the house not more alarmed at the approach of the helicopters? U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta by Alex Wong/Getty Images. NEW YORK -- The Washington Post ran a front-page story Tuesday about the CIA agent who serves as the model for Maya, one of the the main characters in "Zero Dark Thirty," a much-anticipated film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In the film, the CIA recruits Maya out of high school, and later it was deduced that the character is partly based on former CIA analyst Alfreda Scheuer. Only other discussion I could find seems to center around does / should the CIA recruit from high school at all. Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 American thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal.The film dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist network Al-Qaeda, after the September 11 attacks.This search leads to the discovery of his compound in Pakistan and the military raid where bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011. While the credits list Gandolfini only as CIA Director, and he is never named in the film, Gandolfini himself has acknowledged that he plays a barely veiled version of the current Secretary of Defense. Scheuer disputes that the CIA was at fault. Maya is young and delicate-looking, with flowing red hair that is only seen when she pulls off the hood she wears . Shes not Miss Congeniality, but thats not going to find Osama bin Laden, said a former CIA associate, who added that the attention from filmmakers sent waves of envy through the agencys ranks. Presumably if there was anyone she could discuss it with, it would be the Director. Despite the filmmakers skill, the movie is nonetheless something of a litmus testhow a viewer reacts to the mission itself will likely be determined by how the viewer feels about bin Laden, the American military, and the so-called war on terror. Does anyone know why that might be? ***MINIMAL SPOILERS*** Director Kathryn Bigelow has done it again by putting out a superior product. Edit, Because the house was less than a mile from the Pakistani military academy, Pakistan's equivalent of Sandhurst/West Point. I'm pretty sure they don't recruit at all. Her CIA career has followed a more problematic script, however, since bin Laden was killed. The screenplay was written by American journalist/screenwriter Mark Boal. Suddenly, liberals find themselves the biggest proponents of the thin blue line.. Here is a look at the teams recent highlights and its portrayals in pop culture. Previously Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the Agency but was deduced by independent investigative journalists in 2011. If I had a watch, I wouldnt have looked at it once during the screening of Zero Dark Thirty that I attended several weeks ago. Zero Dark Thirty starts with a sonic montage of calls from victims of the 9/11 attacks, and that montage is followed swiftly by the first scenes of torture at a secret site of extraordinary rendition. The suggestion is that many American viewers reliably visceral response to the horrific sounds of 9/11 victims facing imminent death parallels the visceral response of many in government, and that the overheatedly emotional reaction led ineluctably to widespread arrests, secret renditions, and interrogation under tortureto a government that approved and engaged in these practices and to public opinion that accepted them. Red Letter Media sells VHS copy of "Nukie" on eBay for Harry Melling talks about leaving Dudley Dursley behind Press J to jump to the feed. A Senate investigation does not allege Scheuer personally tortured any suspects. The majority of the movie is focused on one female CIA agent and her struggle against the dim witted male chauvinistic CIA management types which seek to minimize her accomplishments and hamper her innate abilities.UH HUGH. In 2002, red-haired CIA analyst Alfreda Scheuer, then known by her maiden name Bikowsky, traveled to a secret CIA prison to watch the torture of al-Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded and locked in a dog box, Senate investigators reported. I think people neglect the fact that orgs like the CIA are not internally transparent and most employees are not high level agents and even/especially if they were, sharing personal stories puts everyone else in jeopardy. This Sunday night at the Academy Awards, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal's Zero Dark Thirty appears poised to lose the Best Picture race to Ben Affleck and Chris Terrio's Argo, and as much as awards . It depicts the overwhelming force of the Abbottabad raidbut it opens with violence of another sort, torture. But when dozens of others were given lesser awards, the female officer lashed out. | What about the dog? Photo by Jonathan Olley/Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.; Photo by Showtime. High school kids aren't that smart. Thermite or plastic explosives are commonly used. What is SSE? Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just to entertain readers. Only I deserve the award.. Finally, in 2011, it appears that her work will pay off, and a U.S. Navy SEAL team is sent to kill or capture Bin Laden. so follow the slow leads is the game. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. The highly anticipated film "Zero Dark Thirty" hits theaters Friday after limited release, but the internet is already abuzz over a line that has people scratching their heads. If you, too, are intrigued to find out more, we may have some details about the same. In fact, the movie presents torture as a seemingly inevitable outcome of the attacks. Ultimately, Zero Dark Thirty is a strikingly accurate film when it comes to recreating the details of the years leading up to the capture and the decisive mission itself. Stills from Zero Dark Thirty by Jonathan Olley / 2012 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Have always wondered why during the cafeteria scene in Zero Dark Thirty, Maya thinks she isn't allowed to disclose the reason she was recruited straight out of high school. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. He asks her how long she has been with the CIA and she says for twelve years and she was recruited out of high school. They do this to mainly prevent enemies from salvaging parts to use against them or others or stealing any advanced technology. Jennifer Matthews, who was one of the employees killed, was his protg, and an unnamed source has cited Rogers hiring of her as an example of the problems with the functioning of the counterterrorism system. Alternatively, she could have joined the armed forces straight out of high school and then joined the CIA from there. (about 1:50:15). At times Chastain aka "Maya" is targeted for death for searching for OBL= Osama Bin Ladin. She has experienced violence, witnessed violence, been the target of violence, lost friends to violence, abetted violence. It might qualify as a spoiler to mention that in a dramatic scene about halfway through the movie, Jessica is killed by a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. Unloved by most of his colleagues, some deem Roger responsible for the December 2009 Khost incident depicted in the film, which left seven CIA employees dead at the hands of an improperly vetted suicide bomber. agent, Maya (Jessica Chastain), whose meticulous and obstinate investigation culminates in the military raid on bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that resulted in his death. In the final scene, she leans her head back against the wall and starts to cry. The more cinematically educated the filmmaker, the more aware of his or her unoriginalityand the more sanctimonious rectitude attaches to the stance of realism, of the repudiation of imaginative fancy, of fictions inventive and imaginative freedom. Zero Dark Thirty is the story of a heroine. Could Maya really have been recruited straight out of high school? In his opposition to the films torture scenes, Senator John McCain reportedly linked Ammar to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, noting that the enhanced interrogation techniques did not provide [them] with key leads on bin Ladens courier, Abu Ahmed. (In the film, Ammar eventually does provide them with that information.) The reason she couldn't talk about it with the Director of the CIA, who already knows what she did and why they recruited her, is that the cafeteria is not a SCIF, meaning classified information cannot be discussed there. 'You must be pretty important. (Both names, of course, are pseudonyms.). Maya is a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst, recruited "out of high school" around 1999, tasked with finding the al-Qaeda leader Osama . Bigelow spent a lot of time working out minute details of the climactic raid, including how the SEALs enter, what steps they are on as they climb up the floors, etc. Is this an image of solitude, exhaustion, regret, existential purposelessness, or just goodbye? | Edit, Zero Dark Thirty is a dramatized account of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden following the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. It is possible Boal and Bigelow added that wrinkle in order to make the scene even more dramatic than it actually was. Some characters seem to be amalgamations of multiple real-life individuals as well. Since the identities of many of the films real-life inspirations are kept under wraps, it is widely assumed that Maya is based on an actual CIA agent referred to as Jen or Miss 100 Percent.. Panetta by Alex Wong/Getty Images there really a Muslim guy who works for the purpose of informing initiating! 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