Zero Dark Thirty, opens 1/11/2013 - Page 3

Glad you enjoyed the film!

Been wanting to rewatch it. Loved the dynamics of the gun sounds.

+1

I liked this movie much more then hurt locker. I agree that bigelow outdid herself like cameron did with avatar vs titanic.

Jacob

Well, it's a good thing it wasn't about $$$$.

I encourage you to re-read these statements....

Are you kidding me!!!.

Hi guys...HNY. I'm enjoying your commentary on this film. It is all useful to me reaching a comfort level with seeing this film. I find it a personal paradox. I really like the director, having worked with her on Strange Days through the enormous New Years Eve climax sequence shot in downtown L.A. (10K extras ) She is charming and very intelligent. On the other hand, I am a vet who held a high security clearance for my career in that field, therefore I am very well trained in "keeping" secrets, for lack of a better term. My biggest concern in this BL affair was the information flow after the event. Like many of you, I watched the president's live announcment of this event on that Sunday night. Within a minute of listening to him, I was very uncomfortable. Way too much was said, even that night by him, and it only got worse over the next week or so.

A fact of life in working where you hold a security clearance is that you receive annual training on how to keep secrets, how they are easily divulged, and how to prevent this from happening. You don't have to divulge something verbatim for it to be compromised. "Talking around" something of classified nature can eventually lead to its compromise because clever advisaries will piece together the puzzle from unclassified chatter. The best policy is "loose lips sink ships;" stay quiet. We did a terrible job of that in the days/weeks following the BL operation. What I have described in this paragraph generally comes under the subject of operational security. How the president and other players could not have the appropriate understanding of and respect for this subject is astounding to me and many others with a similar background.

The F-117 was the best kept U.S. secret in history short of the Manhattan Project. In the early years of that program, the pilots were phased in very slowly and carefully. As cover, they underwent training and flew the A-7 out of Nellis. I trained a lot of them in the A-7 in the late 80s and early 90s. Once they had passed muster and been trained for six months in operational security, they were given "the secret handshake." They could speak of nothing other than they were gone all week and flew at night. Everyone had to undergo periodic polygraphs and were even followed continuously for a while by OSI agents to see if they had loose lips in restaurants, etc..

My point is that I hope that fiction outweighs fact in this film. As one who used to plan and fly low-level ingress and attack missions, I can tell you that it's hard enough to be creative enough with methods, tactics, and techonolgy to be successful. We don't need to be sharing. That fact has no political component, and never should. Security leaking at high levels has reached unprecidented levels these days. It's not helping, to put it diplomatically. I'm hoping this film doesn't exacerbate the problem.

Looking forward to hearing more of your reviews of the film. Cheers.
Edited by Cam Man - 1/14/13 at 5:37am

Somebody has a clue...

Last chance to stick to the movie.

It's your forum, but I would make the case that discussion of this movie can be not only on technical terms as we generally do here, but intellectual...which does not mean political or partisan. This movie is inexorably tied to important history, both recent and not so recent. As long as discussion can remain tied to the movie whether technical or otherwise in a gentlemanly manner without steering off into polemic political discourse, I vote for expression.

I very much want to see it, but my cold and the cough that will not quit prevents me from attending. I'm glad to see it had a healthy wide opening weekend. Maybe it'll b around when I am healthy.

Agreed, but my vote doesn't count here.

I don't think you have anything to worry about since there wasn't anything depicted in the helicopter ingress sequence other than the choppers were stealthy and they did some terrain following. As soon as the pictures of the severed tail rotor started showing up on the web, the aviation enthusiast websites had figured out they weren't ordinary Blackhawks, and the secret was out. If I had to nitpick, I thought the interior noise level of the helos was unrealistically low which didn't jive with them using hand signals to communicate. Yes, I know that those Blackhawks probably had some noise reduction technology but they're still helicopters after all.

tread lightly with this.

for an avs thread, the discussion here has been astoundingly on point.

just check out a couple other threads involving popular movies for a comparision.

Just got back from a screening. It was, in a word, awesome. Jessica Chastain is just brilliant as a woman so single-minded she literally has no other life. So they deliberately made her a cipher. Several surprises in the cast for me as I hadn't read too much about them. The male lead was Jason Clarke, the guy from Showtime's way-underrated 'Brotherhood' about politics and crime in Rhode Island. Coach Taylor had a big role and Tony Soprano showed up. A brief appearance by Cap'n Jack [Harkness] surprised me. Good cast.

The tension at times was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The interrogation scenes were tough to watch at times. No scenes of the mission training (they spent 3 months with full size mockups), which surprised me a little, but the raid itself was totally gripping from start to finish. Big LFE for those who live for that stuff.

A great movie, and a great movie to see the ol' fashioned way. I'll be getting the BD anyway as there was some dialog, especially during the interrogation scenes, that was hard for me to follow. But this certainly ranks up there with the best films I've seen in the last few years.

Re read MY statement. AND if you had read the book by Mark Owen you would have known that HE donated most of the profit from this book to charities to help returning American soldiers deal with PTS and wounds caused by fighting. Also. IF you had read the book about the raid the movie and book are right in line with one another, the percentage is right on. I will not divulge any details since some have not seen the movie as yet. And no, when it comes to facts I don't kid. And where are your facts to counter mine? And are YOU kidding me? So the Pope has authority over the Navy Seals?! Right!

Jeff

Same here! I was thinking about this comment pretty much every time an AK was being shot. The suppressed M4's also sounded good and the breaching charges had an awesome effect.

Just got back from seeing it. I'll echo a few things that others said so there isn't much I can add right now. The performances from the entire cast were first rate! Jessica Chastain really held this one together, imo. She is indeed a rising star. My only problem I had with this was the 'manhunt for Osama' felt...idk, for whatever reason I didn't feel that attached or riveted. I can't put my finger on it. I thought other fiction plots had me at the edge of my seat. Body of Lies comes to mind and that had my heart pumping. I'm not sure about this one. Maybe it's that I know the story and know how it's going to play out. Maybe I just need time to absorb it some more and give it time.

Now the assault at the end.... wow! Kevin (pokekevin) if you're reading this post, I would really like to know what you thought about it in more detail. If you remember, I wasn't all that thrilled with how Act of Valor turned out. My complaint with that one was that the choreography and tactics were almost too good. It felt cold and uninteresting....and I love that kind of stuff! This movie perfectly confirms what I was saying about AoV was that I think, when well trained, real deal actors can portray sequences like this just as well. Black Hawk Down being a supreme example. Hollywood is getting pretty damn good at this sort of thing. That and Kathryn Bigelow is a extremely talented director (I've been a fan for a long time, long before most had heard of her) and can pull off these kinds of sequences better than whoever directed AoV.

Hmmmm...you are beginning to work your magic on me again....

OK

I felt the same way...Bigelow pretty much nailed it. I wish they had spent just a few moments more on the copter crash (going from near frenzy, to recovery, to executing the mission like nothing happened)...instead we see the copter go down and then, abruptly, SEALs moving towards their objective.

I was fascinated by the tenuous nature of the investigation and was caught up in the sequence of events and timeline but, the most controversial part of the film, the interrogations, was the dullest for me (although I thought Jason Clarke was terrific in this part). It was like, "OK, I get the point...let's move on with the rest of the manhunt and the raid."

If I can divorce myself from mixed feelings I have, I will see it.
Problem is I am very familiar with the non-classified information on this subject and am afraid of experiencing too many eye-rolling moments...

Yet you and I both watch all sorts of crap with plenty of 'eye-rolling moments'.

Maybe pre-twist your panties in a bunch and it won't be so painful when you get out there to see it.

I'm just playin' with you, obviously. If you don't want to see it, don't see it. My thing with movies is if I have no interest then I just don't care to see whatever that movie is. Sometimes when I cave and go, "ugh... alright" I'm not in any mood to really enjoy what I'm seeing anyway.

However, just the performances alone are worth the ticket in. Jessica Chastain owned this s**t up! Lol. The movie itself didn't have any particular politcal slant which was good for me cuz I think you're all crazy. Hahah but yeah, the raid at the end was awesome.

I just want you to see it just to hear what you thought about it, even.

True, but not deliberately.

Have you seen her in Lawless?
Oh my, Oh my....

OKAAAAAY, I'll see it.

Cool. You might enjoy it.

Annnnnddd yeessss sir!

Sooo if I'm getting this right, you liked the raid Scott?

Give me a call sometime and I can tell you in detail what I thought about the raid.

I did, yeah.

I would hit you up for sure but you never gave me your number when I PM'd you for it last year. Gimme!

What happened in the movie happened in the book. The copter went down and out they ran. The pilot saved that whole bunch by landing the way he did accidently or on purpose!

Jeff

I shall.

IMO, Lawless is a better movie than most give it credit for.
As for Mr. Lebeouf...I thought he was competent in the role.

OK

That's reassuring; glad to hear.

I still haven't been able to get the time to go see it. After some of you mentioned the gunfire sound I wondered if "our guys" were primarily in semi-auto mode in the raid. I can't speak definitively on what would be used, but the almost exclusive use of semi-auto for the M-4s in Act of Valor gunfights seemed to be a clue. I like that Hollywood can resist full-auto once in a while (mini-guns on the fast boats in AOV, excepted. That was pretty cool.).

Highly likely they were in Semi. I never EVER but my M4 or A4 in burst

Just go see this. NOW.

+1000

saw it last night and it is clearly the best film I have seen over the past 12 months.
bigelow, chastain, and story writers nail it.

it was so good i held my need to go for 1 1/2 hours cause the plot was too riveting to miss even a couple minutes.

the sound was superb as already mentioned here.

i'm ready to go back and see it again tonight.

oink if you don't like this one i''ll buy your tickets for your next movie
Edited by mr. wally - 1/19/13 at 3:12pm