A Nightare On Elm Street (1984)

I have a confession to make.  I haven't been spreading my love equally across the great horror franchises.  When I started this blog, I quickly reviewed a few of the original Nightmare movies, but I got distracted by shiny objects and never really got back on track.  In the meantime, I have reviewed every single Friday the 13th and most of the Halloweens.  Out of a sense of fairness, it is high time I returned to the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, and where else should I start, but with the original?

A Nightmare On Elm Street begins with a mysterious figure crafting an all-purpose murder glove in a boiler room somewhere.  Coincidentally, Tina (Amanda Wyss) has a nightmare where she is chased by a mysterious figure wearing a murder glove!  It's always nice when you don't have to wait for plot points to pay off.  Tina runs from this creepy, fedora-and-ugly-sweater-wearing, razor-gloved meanie, but he catches up with her.

Maybe he just wants a hug

Right when he is about to kill her, Tina wakes up screaming in bed.  It was just a dream!  Except...her nightgown has slash marks in it, right where her nightmare man cut her!  Dum-dah-DUMMMMMM!!!  On a side note, teenagers wear nightgowns?  Anyway, Tina's not the only teen having dreams like this.  Her boyfriend, Rod (Jsu Garcia), her friend, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), and Nancy's boyfriend, Glen (Johnny Depp, in his film debut), have all been having nightmares; despite Tina being openly creeped out by her dream, none of her friends comes forward and admits to having similar nightmares because teenagers don't have empathy.

Or props that make sense in their scenes.  What is with the birds by the boombox?

Since Tina makes such a big deal about her dream, Nancy and Glen agree to keep her company while her parents are out of town.  Rod shows up, too, just in time for some sex scenes that sound remarkably like people trying very hard to sound like they're having all the sex in the world.  After Rod finishes pleasing his woman, this happens:

He becomes the Magneto of flesh?

An invisible attacker slices the hell out of Tina and then, just for giggles, reverses her personal gravity; this was done presumably to force her family to clean her bloody footprints off the ceiling, which looks suspiciously like a deck.  That's when things go a little crazy.  The police, led by Nancy's estranged police lieutenant father (John Saxon), assume that Rod killed Tina (...on the ceiling...?) because he was the only one in the room.  Rod eventually gets caught and winds up in prison, but not before admitting to Nancy that he has had nightmares about a man with a razor bladed murder glove.  This blows Nancy's mind.  To be fair, it should.  That night, as she is dreaming, Nancy watches Mr. Razorfingers entering Rod's cell, preparing to kill.  When she wakes, Nancy knows that Rod is in danger, but no one believes that an invisible dream monster is going to attack him.  They should have, because Nancy was right.  After this point, Nancy is a teen on a mission: stop this mysterious dream monster!  Or at least find out who he is!

...before he falls through that latex wall and lands on her damn head!

The acting in A Nightmare On Elm Street is not very good.  In the lead role, Heather Langenkamp is pretty awful and sadly doesn't die (or does she...?).  She didn't annoy me, but she's not very likable and has trouble with any part of her character that can't be described as a "wet blanket."  Amanda Wyss was a little better as Tina, although she was also pretty basic.  Jsu Garcia was one-dimensional, but his one dimension was that of an insensitive rebel-type, and he did that fairly well.  Johnny Depp wasn't much better, with some of his line readings (especially "WoooOOOOoooo") being painful to watch.  On the bright side, his character didn't demand much acting, and Depp at least managed to get the most memorable death scene in the film.

If you're not going to be good in a movie, at least try to die well

Robert Englund spends most of this movie in the shadows as the evil Fred (not Freddy) Krueger.  Freddy doesn't display his trademark humor or cackle much in this first entry, but I think some of the visuals with Freddy are at their most iconic here.

That's a great introduction shot

Still, Englund isn't at his best here, if only because the script is not sure what direction they want the character to go; Freddy is a presence in this movie more than he is an actual character.  John Saxon actually headlined this movie, which is hilarious in retrospect.  In turn, he was about as good as John Saxon normally is --- he's a perfectly acceptable B-movie actor.  Rounding out the main cast, Ronee Blakley was absolutely horrible in every conceivable way as Nancy's alcoholic mother.  In all fairness, her character is terrible.  Still, Blakely should be able to act circles around Heather Lagenkamp (she is an Oscar nominee, after all), and that just doesn't happen here.

A Nightmare On Elm Street was written and directed by Wes Craven, after he read about (I shit you not) Asian Death Syndrome.  The basic idea here is a chilling one: what if the danger in your dreams was real?  As such, Craven goes out of his way to make a menacing villain, and he does so with some great visual scenes.

That's not Freddy.  That's a subtle warning to not date Nancy.

As far as his direction of the actors goes, Craven did a pretty awful job.  I honestly couldn't tell you if this cast had their lines memorized or were using cue cards.  The pacing in the film is okay, but it's a little slow for a slasher movie.  And that's what this is, oddly enough.  There are elements in the plot that could have made this far more suspenseful and frightening, but Craven opted for a simpler (and dumber) take.  I like the basic idea, but it's not very scary, exciting, or unpredictable, despite having the whole dream monster angle.

The special effects in A Nightmare On Elm Street had some definitely good moments, but it's pretty inconsistent overall.  Glen and Tina's death scenes are pretty great, no doubt about it.  I don't know what it is that makes them so memorable --- is it just the fact that they wind up on the ceiling? --- but they definitely stand out in the genre.  I also really like the moments where the audience is aware of Freddy's presence, but Nancy is not, like when he pushes his face in the wall above her bed, or when she is sitting in the bathtub.  Unfortunately, there are also moments like this:

Unless those are expanding dildos coming out from his shoulder, I'm not impressed

Why is it supposed to be frightening that Freddy can walk slowly with cut-rate Stretch Armstrong arms?  There are other moments that are okay, but have definitely aged a bit over the years.

Is that supposed to be silly putty?

On the whole, though, I think the look and feel of the special effects scenes work pretty well, even twenty-nine years later.

What about the horror, though?  For being a slasher movie, the Nightmare movies have always had a fairly low body count, and A Nightmare On Elm Street definitely sets that precedent.  Four people officially die in this movie.  Granted, two of those kills are pretty awesome, but...just four?!?  LAME. Worse than the low blood and gore count is the fact that this film completely ignores the easiest and most fun possibility for horror: the dreams.  Aside from a few bits with Nancy dreaming about Tina's talking corpse, the only dreamscape we see is Freddy's Land of Boiler Room Fun.  Dreams offer so many possibilities and even one good, weird one would have made a huge difference to the tone of this movie.  It might have even added *gasp* suspense to this slasher pic!

Don't get me wrong, A Nightmare On Elm Street is definitely better than most movies starring Freddy Krueger (noteworthy exception: Freddy Vs. Jason).  I just had a memory of it being actually good instead of just promising.  Really, how many horror franchises have a villain that has at least a kernel of justification in his back story?  Yes, he was evil, but the dude got lynched --- that may not be the best reason to kill teenagers, but at least he has a small excuse.  Unfortunately, most of the promising ideas aren't fully formed.  What makes Freddy Krueger stand out from his slasher movie brethren is his personality, and that is sorely missing from this movie.  Well, that and any logic whatsoever when it comes to when Freddy can kill you --- I'm pretty sure that only one person was actually asleep when they died, which makes no sense.  Even considering its many shortcomings, A Nightmare On Elm Street does have a unique feel to it, which goes a long way for the discerning fan of 80s horror movies.  Is it a classic?  I wouldn't say that, but it has its moments.

Mama

To put it plainly, the horror movie genre is very familiar with a fact that the rest of the world doesn't like to admit: children are scary as shit.  They don't have to be evil, like in The Omen, or a sign of bad tidings, like the girls that are always singing "One, two, Freddy's coming for you."  Even the best kids have moments where their innocence and lack of developed morals come together and make mature adults soil themselves.  Very few filmmakers use that as the core concept of their film, but that is basically what you get in Mama.

Lucas's (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) twin brother, Jeffrey (also Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) went nuts after the 2008 stock market crash, killing several people at work and then returning home to murder his wife.  No one ever saw Jeffrey or his two young daughters after that day, but they were presumed dead.  Lucas was all like, "When you presume, you make a pres out of me and...okay that doesn't work with this one."  He spent every dime he had paying bearded hillbillies (redundant, I know) to search the large, wooded area around Jeffrey's home for some signs of Jeffrey or his kids.  After five long years, the searchers finally found Jeffrey's car, wrecked on the side of a hill, and a dilapidated horror movie cabin nearby.  Inside, the searchers found childish drawings on the wall, along with a disgustingly large pile of cherry pits.  Oh, and they found a two-headed Gollum lookalike that actually turned out to be Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse).

"Nasty little Hobbitses" - all of their dialogue, if I had any say in it

Naturally, Lucas was ecstatic to see his nieces again, even if they were feral, and he wanted to care for them.  His hard-rocking girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) was less enthused, but went along with Lucas's wishes as best she could.

"Enthusiastically" would probably be overselling it

Since these children are obviously damaged, they initially spend their time in a psychiatric ward, under the care of Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash); Dr. Dreyfuss conducts many interviews and hypnosis therapies with Victoria and begins to learn about Mama.  You see, Mama is who took care of the girls for five years.  Mama protected them and loved them and, sometimes, scared them.  At first, Dr. Dreyfuss believes that "Mama" is a persona that Victoria adapted to act as a mother figure to her and her younger sister, Lilly.  But the more he hears, the less likely that seems to be.  When it comes time for the girls to be released into private custody, Dreyfuss works out a deal that allows the girls to live with Lucas and Annabel in a large suburban home, free of charge --- as long as Dreyfuss continues to have regular access to the girls, so he can learn more about Mama.  Even a doctor can tell the difference between an invisible friend and something...different.  Unfortunately, the good doctor doesn't tell anyone else about his theories, which results in Lucas being attacked by something in the house and falling into a coma.  That leaves Annabel on her own with two miniature people who have more in common with raccoons than her.  And, of course, Mama is there, too...

I know it's the weird figure in the background that is supposed to be scary, but that kid's smile creeps me out

As far as the acting goes in Mama, I am happy to say that the children are pretty good.  Their parts aren't very articulate, so it's not a breakthrough performance for either young actress, but so much of Mama depended on them being creepy and they totally pulled it off.  Megan Charpentier, being the older sister, had more to do, and she did it well.  She was creepy when she needed to be, she had some good screams, and her character's progression made sense.  Isabelle Nélisse was surprisingly good at playing feral.  It would have been easy for a kid her age to be hilariously bad in this role, especially since her character doesn't speak in sentences.  Nélisse not only managed to avoid being bad with her dialogue, she did a great job with her physical acting in this movie.  That is probably a big reason why she was the creepy kid in this movie.

It almost looks like she is pulling a corpse off the bed by the hair

How about the adults, though?  Despite playing a dual role, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau spends an awful lot of time off-screen.  I thought he was fine, but I don't know if he brought anything special to the role.  Jessica Chastain was the main character, though, and she got to play the POV character in this movie.  Chastain was fine.  It's hard playing the adult in a movie where the goal is for the kids to stand out, but Chastain kept things fairly subtle.  I got a little annoyed by her "What was that?!?" face always having a gaping mouth, and I thought it was funny how little her character, a professional musician, listened to music, but that's all I can really complain about.

Above: Chastain being startled by strange noises in the room.  They came from your guitar, dummy.

Daniel Kash was less impressive as the cold and calculating psychiatrist, if only because he gave the role no depth.  Speaking of one-dimensional characters, Jane Moffat was irritating as Aunt Jean; here is a character that loves the children, has a logical right to care for them, and would probably be a better parent than Lucas and Annabel, and what do we get?  A straight up bitch.  Such a missed opportunity.

I have to admit that I was impressed by first-time co-writer and director Andrés Muschietti.  Mama looked quite good, from just a cinematography standpoint, but Muschietti also used some clever camera tricks.  My personal favorite was a scene shot down a long hallway, allowing the audience to see into the girls' bedroom and another room simultaneously; the reveal at the end of that scene --- which you can see coming a mile away --- was damn well done, and effective, even if it was predictable.  I thought the general story had a good core to it; Muschietti and his brother came up with the story and screenplay, with Luther creator Neil Cross polishing it for an English-speaking audience.  There are some good semi-scary moments, but what I appreciated were the bits of unexpected tension.  Annabel closing the closet door (of EVIL!!!) instead of opening it, Lilly crawling silently around the house, Victoria's scary eyes in the dark --- those are the bits I will remember most about Mama.

Is it against the rules for movie monsters to kill people wearing Misfits shirts?  It should be.

That said, while there are many small moments that were great, the big scares in Mama didn't quite deliver.  Is there suspense?  Sure.  Are there startling moments?  Yes.  But this film doesn't build on them, and the momentum from scene to scene often gets lost.  

There are certainly some holes in the story, but they thankfully don't get too aggravating.  Why would abandoned children eat a cherry that is rolled across the floor to them from an anonymous source?  Because they are kids, and kids do dumb things.  Okay, fine.  Why would a character that wants to avoid pregnancy be worried enough to take a pregnancy test and then celebrate her non-pregnancy?

Who wouldn't want a little angel like this?

Why wouldn't she just be on the pill or have a nuva ring, or use condoms?  Because...musicians are impulsive, short-sighted sluts?  That's the subtext I'm reading.  Why would a psychiatrist let people live in a home for free so he can observe the children, but not have any video surveillance cameras in or around the house?  Because he is shockingly stupid?  None of these are bad enough to ruin the story, but they are annoying.

You might have noticed that I haven't spoken much about the titular monster in Mama yet.  That's because she's kind of terrible.  Mama is actually used very well by the director, when the audience just catches a glimpse of her here and there.  Unfortunately, the last act of the movie gives us a long, hard look at Mama, and it isn't pretty.

It's like "The Scream" came to life.  Only uglier.

Part of the problem with Mama's character is that she is obviously mostly CGI in a movie without a huge budget.  The other digital effects, particularly the weird moth-emitting wall spots, were solid, but Mama was left looking funny looking instead of frightening.  If they make a sequel (and this film was certainly profitable enough to merit one), fixing Mama's character design needs to be a priority.

Mama is a well-made PG-13 haunted house-type movie.  Given the rating and the first-time direction, I'm impressed.  Could it have been better?  Yes --- ratchet up the pacing a bit and/or make Mama look less stupid and you have something special.  But for a slightly younger horror audience, this isn't bad.

The Evil Dead (1981)

31 Days of Horror: Day 1

When I sat down to watch The Evil Dead recently, it was with the goal of re-watching the entire Evil Dead series, rather than enjoying the original film; it's not that I dislike the first entry in the series by any means, but Evil Dead II is a remake of the first film, and is funnier/gorier/awesomer.  Ask anyone.  After about fifteen minutes of The Evil Dead, though, I came to a realization: I have never seen this movie before.  I don't know why I was so absolutely certain that I had seen this movie --- I would have sworn to having seen this, even at gunpoint --- but that shock did two things for me.  First, it was a bit humbling to realize that I had missed a cult classic like this, especially since I enjoy its sequels so much.  Second, it meant that I should probably reassess my presumptions about the film.  So, here goes a review --- now, with fresh eyes!

 The Evil Dead begins with five coeds on a trip to a remote cabin in the woods.  And, by "remote cabin in the woods," I of course mean a traditional horror movie murder cabin.  This place doesn't look relaxing or quaint. 

Even odds on the lampshades being made from human skin

Whatever, this is a horror movie and unfortunate choices are bound to happen.  When exploring this rustic cabin, the group discovers a trap door that leads to a dank basement.  Now, as a horror movie viewer, you might imagine that the basement is going to have something scary in it.  It's a reasonable assumption.  However, the trap door has been fashioned so that you can chain it shut, which makes it --- and this is a best-case scenario, mind you --- a torture dungeon.

"Last one in is the gimp"

But, once again, horror movie logic dictates that the two men of the group, Scott (Richard DeManincor) and Ash (Bruce Campbell), go down to the creepy basement and explore.  Surprisingly, it's not too bad down there.  There's a few weapons, but nothing alarming.  In fact, the most interesting thing they find is a weird book and an audio recording.

So...it's a book about Megadeth?

Being curious youngsters, thy decide to sit and listen to the audio recording while flipping through the obviously-not-evil book.  Ash's sister, Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss), had had some weird premonitions of danger before they found the book, which culminated in her drawing hand getting possessed and making a truly dull pencil drawing.

Her possessed hand drew...Spongebob?

Of course, she doesn't tell anyone about this incident because HORROR MOVIE.  Instead, she listens to the audio tape with the others.  It seems that the book they found is a Book of the Dead, which has spells and incantations for all sorts of bad stuff, and the tape they found was the audiobook version of it.  Why would somebody record spells on an audio tape?  Maybe to allow underprivileged aspiring cult leaders to cast spells without having to learn demonic languages at Satan School?  Anyway, Cheryl freaks out, runs into the woods, and winds up getting raped by the woods.  What does that mean?  It means just what it sounds like.

Not surprisingly, that makes a bit of an impression on Cheryl.  However, she handles it in an somewhat surprising fashion: she gets possessed by a demon (or something) that has a fondness for skin-shredding.  Whatever she has is contagious, too, because every member of the group demons-out at one point or another, except for Ash.  Can Ash save his friends?  Will they survive the night?  Or will they all become *pause for effect* the evil dead?

It's not as bad as it looks.  The heavy makeup ruins your complexion over time, but hey, you're dead.

The Evil Dead was twenty-year-old writer/director Sam Raimi's first movie (although IMDb does list some Super8 shorts he made as a teen), and it definitely has some rough edges.  The dialogue is frequently stiff and unnatural.  The cast tends to overact, even in the most basic scenes.  The synth-heavy soundtrack only adds to the overall sense of cheesiness.  The story doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, and there does not really seem to be much logic in who gets "infected" by demons and when.

And why is Ash's nemesis in this film bookcases?

And yet, that somehow doesn't really matter.  Raimi put together a bizarre movie --- a horror film without an enemy to attack and overcome --- and he spiced up this unusual format with plenty of creative gore.

Raimi's sped-up POV-ish camera work for the forest demon-things is distinctive enough to make a movie with a LOT of stereotypical setup feel different.  Is this great work from Raimi?  No, but it is, at the very least, interesting...provided that you can get past the initial cheesiness.

The acting in The Evil Dead is pretty terrible, overall.  A very young Bruce Campbell showed some charm, but his best moments were the less serious moments.  It is also kind of cute listening to him without his trademark baritone.

Campbell, charting when his other testicle will drop

Richard DeManincor was pretty awful as Scott, but he also had the dumbest character in the movie, so it's probably not entirely his fault.  Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, and Theresa Tilly don't really have many instances to be much better; at best they are damsels in distress, at worst they are cackling witches.

Acting isn't everything, though, in a horror movie.  The ultimate question here is whether or not The Evil Dead provides a scary experience.  And that answer is: kind of, I guess.  There is certainly enough violence and gore to satisfy most fans of the genre.

Not much in terms of sex, which is probably for the best.

The makeup is actually pretty good in this movie.  The special effects --- the ending melting scenes and the tree rape --- are not technically impressive, but they are pretty memorable.   

Above: Not your standard monster death

Overall, The Evil Dead is a solid low-budget horror flick.  It's not that scary, but it more than makes up for it in gore and strangeness.  It is substantially different from Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, but that difference in tone is what makes this worth watching.  Evil Dead II is so goofy, it is interesting and fun to see the same talent doing the same story with a different spin.  It doesn't happen much, but The Evil Dead is a rare example of a movie that is definitely less impressive than its remakes, but still worth a watch.

The Good Thief

I hadn't seen The Good Thief in many years when I stumbled across it on Netflix recently.  My recollection of it was pretty foggy; I recalled a distinctly European vibe and being surprised that Nick Nolte was capable of entertaining me without a mug shot.  As it turns out, The Good Thief is a remake of a Melville noir, Bob le Flambeur.  I haven't seen that yet, but that trivia nugget was enough to pique my curiosity.  Did I like this film so long ago because Nick Nolte was awesome, or because there was a heavy dose of French cool in the story?  Not that it matters, I suppose, as long as it's good.

The plot of The Good Thief is nothing new, even considering the fact that this is a remake.  Bob (Nick Nolte) is a retired thief that has given up the fast-paced life of criminal intrigue for a dull retirement, filled with needle drugs and compulsive gambling.  But he was a really good thief, even if he has been arrested six times; he's kind of like a Danny Ocean with bad habits, if that clarifies things at all. 

This is Bob's Eleven Seven

Even though he has been out of the game for years, his police nemesis, Roger (Tchéky Karyo), has made a habt of checking in on Bob, to keep him on the straight and narrow.  But when Bob inevitably gambles his last dime (or ruble or franc or whatever) away, he is desperate enough to entertain an impossible robbery.  All he needs is the right crew and a plan.  It could be a very cut-and-dry plot, if not for the inclusion of one x-factor: a girl.

The Good Thief is not the sort of move that is going to have overwhelming performances.  For the most part, the cast is comprised of little-known actors and the director leans toward subtler forms of expression.  That said, this is easily one of the best performances of Nick Nolte's career.  He is perfectly aged for the role of the seasoned clever guy who has been through rough times.  Hell, his glass-shards-in-gravel voice alone would highlight the film, but Nolte also managed to make excellent use of his nonverbal scenes.  I get why he wasn't nominated for an Oscar for this (it was a relatively tough year), but he is damn good here. 

Doesn't he look like someone who's been in prison six times?

The rest of the cast is less impressive.  Nutsa Kukhianidze was okay as the lost and manipulative Anne, but I think a role this manipulative could have been done better.  Still, she managed to convey illicit sexuality and heartbreaking innocence at the same time, so I can't legitimately claim that she did a bad job.  

Mostly because lingerie doesn't hide nipples

Tchéky Karyo was solid as the obsessive cop; I liked that he was not clearly outsmarted by Bob, but  he didn't really have much of a personality to counter the charm of Nolte's Bob.  Saïd Taghmaoui, Ouassini Embarek, Gérard Darmon, and Emir Kusturica were fine is basic-level roles.  Embarek was not very impressive, but his Judas-esque part didn't require much from him.  Oh, and for some reason, Ralph Fiennes plays an uncredited role as a shady art dealer.  He was pretty good; I don't know why he was left uncredited, since he was featured in the trailers.

"You think that's weird?  Look at the painting I'm holding!"

Neil Jordan directed The Good Thief, and it is clear that he was interested in trying some new ideas.  The cinematography is, as a whole, unimpressive.  It does, however, have some odd moments where the frame rate seems to drop well below that standard 24fps.  It's like Jordan is trying to convey a slow passage of time, but his method is the exact opposite film technique that would result in slow-motion.  I didn't like it, but it was an interesting (if choppy) try.  Aside from that, there are not a lot of surprises here, from a direction standpoint.  Jordan gets an excellent performance from his lead actor, while the rest of the cast is fairly sketchy. 

Nobody (except possibly Franco-Judas) was bad, but most of the characters felt underdeveloped and devoid of personality. 

The strange thing about The Good Thief is that it is, at its core, a heist movie.  Despite that, the main character isn't really involved in the heist.  That can work (as in Ocean's Eleven), but you really need to invest in the theft and not the character at that point.  That doesn't happen here.  Not only is the audience primarily interested in Nolte's character, but so is the camera; we follow Bob gambling while the heist is taking place.  That should plainly say something about the story, but I don't think it is conveyed well in this movie.

Also lacking: fashion

There is plenty to enjoy with The Good Thief, though.  Nolte was surprisingly charming in the gruffest manner possible.  I liked the relationship between Bob and Anne, even if it was all sorts of shades of grey.  I also enjoyed the friendly rivalry between Bob and Roger; it is an under-used movie subplot, and was one fun character (the cop) away from being fantastic. 

To Nolte: "Do you want to do all the work in this scene?"

The idea behind the heist is a clever execution of feints and counter-feints.  Unfortunately, the movie is a little under-paced and the ending --- while clever --- is more cerebral than emotional or sensational.  In other words, it's cute, but I was expecting more.

Zero Dark Thirty

Of all the Oscar-nominated films of 2012, none was as controversial as Zero Dark Thirty.  There were a few different reasons for this (most of which boils down to election-year political babbling), but the element that received the most discussion --- intelligent or otherwise --- revolved around the film's portrayal of torture as an effective interrogation tactic.  I certainly will not be as eloquent as some of those articles, but I will try to address the issue in a small way.  First things first, though.  I went in to Zero Dark Thirty as the final film in a marathon of Best Picture nominees.  I had high hopes, even though I wasn't in love with Kathryn Bigelow's last film, The Hurt Locker.  I heard that this was a film that asked a lot of tough questions and did not give comforting answers.  America has been fighting its War on Terror for over a decade now, and we still haven't gotten a movie that (in my mind, anyway) makes an awesome statement about it.  It may be a lot to ask of a movie, but that was what I was hoping for with Zero Dark Thirty.

Zero Dark Thirty is the somewhat true-ish tale of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden (played by the always delightful Ryan Reynolds).  Maya (Jessica Chastain) is a fresh CIA recruit in 2003, newly assigned to the task force that is trying to track down Bin Laden.  Right out of the gate, Maya is confronted with the harsh reality of torture.  One of her new coworkers, Dan (Jason Clarke), spends a good amount of time at a Black Box site, interrogating detainees.  Dan and his subordinates threaten, badger, and offer the occasional kindness in their quest for information --- aaand they also torture the shit out of their prisoners, too.  Waterboarding, humiliation, sensory deprivation, and just general abuse are some of the more colorful ways Dan elicits information.

Above: Dan, scraping some "torture juice" off his shoes

While no one is willing to dish on Osama Bin Laden, Dan and Maya managed to trick one detainee into naming a courier that delivers messages to Bin Laden. In and of itself, that little morsel of information doesn't mean much, but over the next few years, Maya is able to piece together a small piece of the larger picture.  If she is correct, and this courier is trusted with an important job, then that means he actually meets with the elusive Osama Bin Laden.  If that is true, then all Maya needs to do is track down this courier (who she does not have a picture or real name of) to find Bin Laden.  It's as easy as combing through literally tons of intelligence reports for a single clue over an eight-year span, while negotiating changing political and professional priorities and surviving a terrorist bombing.

She went in a novice and left a female David Caruso.  YEAAAAHHHH!

If nothing else, Kathryn Bigelow does an excellent job subverting expectations with Zero Dark Thirty.  This is less of a war movie or a manhunt than it is a police procedural.  In that regard, it's a pretty solid one.  Jessica Chastain fills the role of the obsessive person who just knows that they're right capably, and Bigelow does a good job making her look like the most capable person in the room at any given time.  When it finally gets to be Zero Dark Fifteen-ish, Bigelow shifts gears and reminds audiences that she knows how to add tension to military scenes.

What I found most interesting about Bigelow's approach to the material was that it felt surprisingly light on judgement.  The torture scenes seemed to affect the characters just as much as suicide bombers, or the final assault on Bin Laden's complex.  This could easily have been a propaganda piece, like The Green Berets, but Zero Dark Thirty strove for a much more documentary feel.

As a movie that is, essentially, a procedural with documentary tones to it, Zero Dark Thirty is not a great spotlight for acting.  Jessica Chastain was pretty good as the emotional core of the film, but even her fairly rounded character exhibited frustration more than anything else.  She did morph into a convincingly bad-ass intelligence agent, but I felt that the personal investment of the character --- which was mind-numbingly large --- didn't translate into her performance. 

Jason Clarke was impressive in a supporting role; the more I see of Clarke, the more I like him and truly believe that he's close to a breakout role.  He had one of the more despicable parts in the film, but he gave it some unexpected humanity, too.  Most of the rest of the film was filled with bit parts, and many of them were played by character actors.  Still, in the cast of thousands, there were some familiar faces.  On the political side of the plot, Kyle Chandler was (once again) a bureaucrat, Mark Strong was a sneakier type of bureaucrat, James Gandolfini was kind of a military bureaucrat, and John Barrowman essentially acted as Jessica Chastain's hype man with his sole line.  All of those are good actors, but only Mark Strong had an opportunity to show off any (which he did).  On Maya's team, Harold Perrineau made a very brief and very welcome appearance and Jennifer Ehle was pretty good as the intelligence character that always seemed to be wrong.  When the story turned to the military side of things, Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton were the face of the strike team.  Pratt was surprisingly engaging as a slight goofball, while Edgerton played his part more through glaring than with dialogue.

Their haircuts match their characters

Okay, I've covered the plot, the direction and the acting.  What about all that torture?  On the one hand, I can agree (to an extent) with the argument that acceptance can be construed as condoning.  I honestly don't get where people are coming from when they say that the overall message here is that torture was necessary to find Bin Laden.  At worst, this film takes an indifferent stance on the issue.  Of course, the message is not that torture did no good, either; information gleaned through torture did eventually lead to the film's climax, but the methods are not shown as heroic or even necessary evils.  As with so much of Zero Dark Thirty, it would be so much easier to derive meaning and intent if this film had given in to machismo or back-patting nationalism.  Instead, the audience is subjected to extended periods of unpleasantness as the detainees are tortured on-screen.  If there is a message in Zero Dark Thirty about torture, I would argue that it is closer to "torture sure is messed up, right?" than anything else.

I was not sure how I felt about Zero Dark Thirty when it ended.  It certainly did not live up to my expectations, but that is not a bad thing.  This was a substantially different film than I was expecting, and I respected the emotionally-neutral choice of tone.  I would have preferred something that asked questions instead of simply reported issues, but that would have fundamentally altered Bigelow's documentary-feel.  I wish it had felt more immediate, though.  I was so separated from the emotions of these characters that the exits of Kyle Chandler and Jennifer Ehle had no impact on me, much less anything that happened to Jessica Chastain.  Everything just felt too impersonal.  That can happen in procedural dramas, but the main character's charisma or brilliance helps keep things exciting as the audience is drip-fed clues.  Chastain was at her best in conference room scenes, convincing bureaucrats to believe her.

There was a shocking amount of whatever you want to call this

For Zero Dark Thirty to work as a procedural, her best scenes needed to be her putting the pieces of the puzzle together.  This is a movie that could have done more, but also could have been truly insufferable.  Instead, it landed somewhere in the middle for me.