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I got a bunch of interesting responses to my question about Zero Dark Thirty and its portrayal of torture. Something like 3/4 of the responses agreed in some fashion with my take — that the movie didn’t seem as pro-torture as its critics had led me to suspect. But there’s probably some level of sample bias involved in that breakdown.

Here’s one response from TPM Reader ST that takes the contrary stance …

I did not have your reaction. I just saw the movie this week as well and I had the opposite reaction – despite my wanting Kathleen Bigelow to succeed because I really value her artistic voice.

Having read the full 9/11 Commission’s Report and Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, I ended up agreeing with the critics. Torture was vindicated in so many ways: torturing individuals eventually resulting in confirming the existing of Abu Ahmed; the scene you mentioned – maybe not Jessica Chastain but Jennifer Ehle showed a subtle disdain in her look at Obama; the fact that contrary to what actually happened, an alternate voice (e.g., the FBI) to the effectiveness of these tactics was not given one line. The fact was that the FBI, skilled in interrogation was frozen out of the process for too long was not even given a nod.

My supposition, having written screenplays myself, is that Bigelow and Boal, in their research and interviews, got blown away by the commitment of the team, especially the person called Maya, that pursued UBL and didn’t go further. Justifiable perhaps but if you’re trying to depict a “story based on actual events”, you still have to do minimal journalistic legwork and try to remain objective. Finally, I thought the movie had a split personality, gratuitously violent in the beginning, then a pretty straight-forward police thriller in the later tracking of his chauffeur. In no way justifying an Oscar in my book. Argo is a better constructed movie in story, cinematography and character. At best, Bigelow left us confused about what to think about torture and black sites, at worst, she didn’t do her homework to really show a movie that reflected the full experience of the people involved. Like the rest of the culture, she decided to turn away from the controversy and ended up making an OK movie, not a brilliant movie like The Hurt Locker.

That’s my two cents.

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