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. Both are presented as unusually sure of their analyses, even in comparison to their CIA colleagues, whose conclusions they confidently upend. 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. What about the dog? | Jessica Chastain who plays the CIA analyst is absolutely incredible. Zero Conscience in "Zero Dark Thirty". Do you know how many CIA officers are jerks? the former official said. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for ZERO DARK THIRTY - DVD Rated R at the best online prices at eBay! She unzips it, takes a long, hard look at the face, and confirms that it belongs to bin Laden. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. In the film, Maya watches an al-Qaida suspect get waterboarded and locked in a tiny compartment. 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. The movies release was delayed amid criticism that it amounted to a reelection ad for President Obama. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. While there, Danes met in the hallway the man who was the head of the Pakistani division and had just returned to the U.S. (after the killing of Osama bin Laden)., Danes doesnt draw any line between that mission and her characters (loose) inspiration, and it is possible, of course, that the man just happened to walk by. Scheuer says she was recruited to the CIA while a graduate student at Tufts University's Fletcher School in 1988 by the now-deceased CIA officer Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, who founded the . When the lights came on and I discovered that I had been in my seat for two and a half hours, the movies length came as a surprise. Movie Review: "Zero Dark Thirty" By: Scott Pfeiffer Posted on: Monday, January 28, 2013 < < Back to It took a long time to get him. The screenplay was written by American journalist/screenwriter Mark Boal. The goal of /r/Movies is to provide an inclusive place for discussions and news about films with major releases. The celebrated Navy SEAL squad that killed Osama bin Laden has been the focus of a series of books and films. She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. Now out of the CIA, Scheuers career has taken a turn: She is a life coach, running a business called YBeU Beauty, focusing on helping women look good, feel good, and do good. The internal frictions are an unseemly aspect of the ongoing fallout from a mission that is otherwise regarded as one of the signal successes in CIA history. The wig, everything, Kuwaiti drove a white S.U.V. Zero Dark Thirty (DVD, 2012) Condition: Very good Comes with Case & Artwork Zero Dark Thirty (DVD, 2012) Condition: Very good Comes with Case & Artwork . Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. Slates Emily Bazelon noted that he might most closely resemble Hassan Ghul, who told interrogators valuable information about Kuwaiti, and may have been subjected to some rough treatmentthough the C.I.A. The character Maya, which is not the CIA operatives real name, is portrayed as a gifted operative who spent years pursuing her conviction that al-Qaedas courier network would lead to bin Laden, a conviction that proved correct. The naysayers who thought her previous hit, "The Hurt Locker" was a fluke/had help from her famous ex-husband James Cameron( Titanic, Avatar and others) were incorrect and hopefully this movie will shut the naysayers up once and . Not all of the heroes that night were human. Torture is depicted as indirectly but indubitably useful in the search for bin Laden (an assertion that has been denied by officials, as reported in the magazine by Dexter Filkins); a crucial piece of information in Mayas investigation is elicited from a prisoner who had been tortured and, now being fed a peaceful lunch, is threatened with more torture in the case of his non-coperation. Zero Dark Thirty, after earning five Oscar nominations including Best Picture, finally went wide this past weekend and immediately shot to No. Unlike the NSA, the CIA has more diverse assets that function in broader spectrums. Clarridge would go on to face a perjury indictment for his testimony about the Iran-Contra affair. Maya, the film's main character, spends a The much-discussed opening scene of Zero Dark Thirty features the main character Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, observing a detainee at a Though Zero Dark Thirty refers to Maya being recruited to the CIA out of high agent, Maya (Jessica Chastain), whose . Yes Boring, tedious and excessively attentive to minutia details while ignoring the main theme of the movie. For one, Mayas friend Jessica, who dies in a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, seemingly refers to Jennifer Lynne Matthews. During the scene where Maya is angry of at CIA that she found Osama Bin Laden and wrote its 52 days that she found the house, the BGM is from the telugu film Leader. While some of the movies details differ slightlyMaya is recruited out of high school, not college, before working on the operation for a full decadeother Jen-related passages from the book read like the shooting script for Zero Dark Thirty. Zero Dark Thirty, which opens nationwide January 11th, is a white-knuckle look at the decade-long hunt for bin Laden, which virtually ignores party politics. Edit, "Zero Dark Thirty" is military slang for an unspecified time in the early hours of the morning before dawn. There is a very clear line between an interrogator and a debriefer, she said. Edit, SSE is sensitive site exploitation. She then boards a transport plane where she is told to sit anywhere because hers is the only name on the manifest. But in a broad sense, she said waterboarding cited in government reports was not torture, insisted such techniques can work and said any criticism of her was largely the result of her taking risks to combat terrorism. What a let down. I got bloodied, she said, alluding to criticism of her agency in government and media reports, and kept coming back to try again and again to do something. In the 2012 Hollywood hit Zero Dark Thirty, a red-haired Central Intelligence Agency analyst played by Jessica Chastain travels to a secret CIA prison and watches a colleague waterboard a screaming al-Qaida suspect, then lock him in a box a little bigger than a mini-fridge, to make him talk. One of the shibboleths of the modern cinema, of the liberal cinemaand of critics who endorse itis the ostensible merit, aesthetic as well as moral, of ambiguity. She believes a male operative would not have been described the same way. Zero Dark Thirty operates on several levels, and it functions against itself: even as the movie stokes excitement for the hunt for bin Laden, it stands outside the mission andwithout actually posing questions about the operationposes the mission itself as a question, by way of canny and conspicuous omissions in content, strategies in representation, and control of tone. pre-owned Zero Dark Thirty Pic rivets for most of its running time by focusing on how one female CIA agent with a far-out hunch was instrumental in bringing down America's most wanted fugitive. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, writing yesterday about the NBC article, added that the officer " is still in a position of high authority over counterterrorism at the C.I.A." This officer . who were pursuing bin Laden, even by means of rendition and torture? The real reason any agency recruits this young is because they want a pure mind. A 2005 CIA inspector general report said the CIA failed to pass the travel information about al-Qaida attackers to the FBI before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US. The story is a very good one but just too long. A 2 hour 46 minute yawn. Excellent movie. As stated in the movie, this was a new top-secret stealth version of the Black Hawk helicopter that had never been used in combat before. 3:20 PM. Entdecke Zero Dark Thirty (DVD, 2013) in groer Auswahl Vergleichen Angebote und Preise Online kaufen bei eBay Kostenlose Lieferung fr viele Artikel! The latter was described as one of the CIAs top experts on al-Qaida and was killed in the Camp Chapman attack in 2009. In January 2014, the Washington Post named her and tied her to a pre-9/11 intelligence failure and the extraordinary . Even if there is no such connection, though, it seems remarkable that the most thoroughgoing depictions of the war on terror in both television and film are told through the eyes of characters with so much in common. In Zero Dark Thirty they mention that Maya was recruited by the CIA in High School . Its a canny litmus test that embeds its coy ambiguities in its very form. At one point Bissonnette describes how he asked Jen, Honestly, what are the odds its him? One hundred percent, she shot back, almost defiant, Bissonnette writes. The movie shows government employees taking part in decisions regarding the deployment of mighty power and vast resources; the making of decisions of vast moment and immediate, possibly grave, even world-historical results. Edit, Because the house was less than a mile from the Pakistani military academy, Pakistan's equivalent of Sandhurst/West Point. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. External Reviews 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. Edit, CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain), assigned to Pakistan to learn how to apply "enhanced interrogation" (i.e. Although they were suspicious, it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up, and they considered it worth the risk. 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. She is soon in the "group of " CIA types who use torture, deprivation and just about any means to get info on their quarry Osama. Bigelow and Boal's second collaboration, Zero Dark Thirty, spans a whole decade, from 9/11 to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, and it centres on a CIA operative called Maya (Jessica . Edit, It's standard practice to destroy remaining military equipment that can't be salvaged. This matches what we see in the moviealthough, according to those reports, he was let into the base without a search because of that trust, while in Zero Dark Thirty, Jessica instructs guards not to search him so as not to scare him off. I know the CIA has like a "internship" program for high-school kids but you seek them out. For five years, she becomes obsessed to find Osama and in 2011, the terrorist leader of Al-Qaeda is killed by the U.S. Navy SEAL Team following the lead of Maya. Alfreda Frances Bikowsky (born 1965) is a Central Intelligence Agency officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. Indeed, when it comes to hunting al-Qaida, they have at times been the norm: The CIAs first unit devoted to tracking al Qaeda, known as Alec Station, hired women analysts almost exclusively in the 1990s, according to a fascinating piece from the Daily Beast published in September. Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. The wig, everything. . The celebrated Navy SEAL squad that killed Osama bin Laden has been the focus of a series of books, films and video games. Maya is a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst, recruited "out of high school" around 1999, tasked with finding the al-Qaeda leader Osama . Zero Dark Thirty tells a . Bissonnette also describes Jens reaction when they brought back bin Ladens body: Peter Bergen, a journalist who has written about counterterrorism and the Middle East for years, has said that the guy who was on the account from 2003 to May 1, 2011, when Bin Laden was killed, and the guy who was always saying that Bin Laden is living in the mysterious compound in Abbottabadthat guy is a guy, hes not a female. But this conflicts with statements from Bigelow, who has confirmed that the character of Maya was inspired by a woman. Maya, like all the characters, like anyone, is filled with thoughts, with an endless flow of internal monologue, with ideas and memories, self-justifications and self-doubts. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. If anything, a former CIA officer might be in academia and perhaps think Maya would've been fit for the agency, and would suggest that she'd give it a shot. Carrie is, of course, onlyloosely modeled on an actual CIA officer,so its entirely possible that the writers of Homeland did not take these traits from their real-life inspiration, but rather added them to the character in order to propel the narrative of their series. The move stunned the womans former associates, despite her reputation for clashing with colleagues. I wondered about that too since I knew someone all of my childhood that worked for the CIA and they were definitely not recruited in high-school, but definitely were in college. One of the last bits of casting news revealed ahead of the release of Zero Dark Thirty was that James Gandolfini would play the role of Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA who oversaw the Bin Laden raid. December 14, 2012. THE HUNT FOR OSAMA BIN LADIN Overly hyped movie~ Jessica Chastain is solid as the youthful CIA INTELLIGENCE person "Maya" who recruited out of high school wants to "get ahead" in her job . 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. Did they still go up to 007, if you couldn't yet count that high? Screenwriter Mark Boal himself has acknowledged that all of the characters in the film are based on real people. Some of these real people, like the agent who inspired Maya, still work under secret identities, and Boal says that he and director Kathryn Bigelow went to great lengths not to blow their cover, including, e.g., not casting people who look like them. In fact, I raised my hand loud and proud and you know, I dont regret it at all.. As the movie proceeds and Maya pieces together bits of data that suggest bin Ladens presence at the Abbottabad compound, she and her colleagues are charged with evaluating the evidence for its reliability, so that the President can make a reasonable judgment as to whether to unleash the assault. En Espaol right out of high school; why was she recruited? That's probably poetic license on the part of the screenwriter. 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 . Even the hostage-takers have their reasons. Wait until they go through college so they don't have to waste a bunch of time training them. Naw. The New Yorker once dubbed Scheuer, again citing her position but omitting her name, as the Queen of Torture, writing that she gleefully participated in torture sessions. Bikowsky's identity is not publicly acknowledged by the Agency but was deduced by independent investigative journalists in 2011. What the movie makes clear is that harsh physical abuse was a part of the CIAs post-9/11 investigations. The end show where Maya is sitting is a plane is a total disappointment so why have it? Theres no ideological context for bin Laden or those suspected of association with Al Qaeda; theres also no doctrinal, or, for that matter, personal context for the protagonist. ***MINIMAL SPOILERS*** The report also notes that, prior to 9/11, she supported the decision of a subordinate to withhold from the FBI the fact that two of the 9/11 hijackers, who were on an FBI watch list at the time, had entered the country. Zero Dark Thirty ***MINIMAL SPOILERS*** Director Kathryn Bigelow has done it again by putting out a superior product. | They started training me before I was even conceived. Entertainment & Arts. | Stills from Zero Dark Thirty by Jonathan Olley / 2012 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Silhouette of a dog by iStockphoto. A high school graduate has the basic skills but hasn't yet been molded. Why were there four men in the house while CIA confirmation spoke of three male targets living in the house? For two decades Scheuer was a central figure in some of the major controversies of Americas war on Islamist extremist groups, including secret detention centers and brutal interrogations. Yes 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 . Scheuer says she was recruited to the CIA while a graduate student at Tufts Universitys Fletcher School in 1988 by the now-deceased CIA officer Duane Dewey Clarridge, who founded the agencys counterterrorism center. about one hour too long. The film is a cinematic page-turner, constructed on a simple architecture: the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, mainly from the perspective of a C.I.A. Over the past year, she was denied a promotion that would have raised her civil service rank from GS-13 to GS-14, bringing an additional $16,000 in annual pay. Given the realistic portrayal of events in Zero Dark Thirty, the audience wonders if actual incidents inspire it. Silhouette of a woman by iStockphoto. Why did she accept? One of the more obvious correlations between character and real-life inspiration is the key suspect in Mayas hunt, Bin Ladens courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. By Jane Mayer. It made me wonder if there was some family connection or I-don't-know-what that would have made her the exception to be recruited out of high school. She said her role was as a subject matter expert, not an interrogator. After this went right, there were a lot of people trying to take credit, the former intelligence official said. She has a "go get them" attitude which leads her to Pakistan. U.S. officials acknowledged that Boal met with Mayas real-life counterpart and other CIA officers, typically in the presence of someone from the agencys public affairs office. After seven CIA operatives are killed in a suicide double-cross at Camp Chapman, Afghanistan-including (in a move as old as Homer) her only near-friend (Jennifer Ehle)--it's not Vin Diesel but Maya who pledges, "I'm going to smoke everyone involved in this op, and . After joining Alec Station, Scheuer rose to deputy chief and then, she says, its chief. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just to entertain readers. Powered by WordPress.com VIP. Better than a sleeping pill. In a tiny compartment then boards a transport plane where she is told to sit anywhere hers. Is a very good one but just too long while CIA confirmation of... 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