What else am I supposed to think when a boring piece of clap-trap like "Zero Dark Thirty" gets a 93% while awesome movies like "The Last Stand" got a measly 59%, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" got 65%, and "Django Unchained," one of the best movies I've seen in years, is at an 88%?
Are you kidding me with this? Really, everyone? "Zero Dark Thirty" was rated better than "Django Unchained?" I'm not saying an 88% is something to be scoffed at, but was the fact that Quentin Tarantino makes enjoyable films such a turn-off to some of you? Or were you all so shaken in your ultra-PC, easily offended little bubbles by the dreaded "n-word" being used? Maybe you could explain why you called black dudes getting tortured in "Django" to be "in poor taste" whilst calling an Arab dude getting tortured in "Zero Dark Thirty" to be "provocative" and "powerful?"
Isn't it interesting where the line is drawn?
ZD30 is a plodding, self-fellatiating exercise in testing the limits of how far the audience is willing to blindly accept the notion that everything Kathryn Bigelow makes is fantastic, simply because that's what they've been told. All it has going for it is the fact that it's about terrorism, it shows waterboarding, and it attempts to paint both sides with multiple shades of grey. But the terrorism aspect is barely seen, the waterboarding lasts about a minute, and while it tries to be morally ambiguous it's clearly just as much American chest-thumping as any random Michael Bay movie is. Oh, and it's over two and a half hours. Because that was necessary.
Am I saying that "Zero Dark Thirty" is a bad film or that Kathryn Bigelow is a bad director? Well no, it's not techincally a "bad film," I am saying that it's boring and that she's severely overrated. Take that for what it's worth, and if you enjoyed this or "The Hurt Locker," then by all means don't allow me to detract from the entertainment you get from either film, since you're clearly in the camp that finds her work sublime. I just think you're all nuts because I found both films to be insufferable.
I could attempt to describe the plot of ZD30, but honestly I started blanking out pretty early on in the film in terms of what I was seeing and what anybody was talking about. I happen to be in luck, though, since the film is extraordinarily easy to sum up, because all that essentially happens is that:
1) Jessica Chastain works for the CIA. She wants to get Osama bin Laden.
2) They interrogate a metric crap-ton of Arab gentlemen in order to find bin Laden.
3) They find bin Laden. They shoot him in the face. Jessica Chastain has nothing to say. The End.
"Man, you guys. I sure am glad we're only in the last 20% of the movie, and that the previous 80% is talking. Otherwise that might have been exciting or something."
All that takes over two and a half hours. And despite its simplicity, throughout the entire affair I had little to no idea what was going on. The endless conversations which make up a vast amount of the run-time almost instantly devolve into a never-ending cycle of Arabic names that sound utterly alien to my ears, therefore making the connections impossible to follow. This of course is a problem since the whole point of the movie is to follow Jessica Chastain on her investigation, uncovering threads as they are revealed.
But how am I supposed to understand any of it when it's just a swirling cloud of names that all sound like "Abdul Al-Aldebwah," all connected to angry looking bearded men that all look identical to each other in their black and white surveillance camera mugshots, which is usually the only time we see their faces since we never actually meet any of them? I have no idea who any of these people are. And that's not limited to Arab people, either. I didn't even know who in the blue hell any of the Americans were. There were roughly 5 American characters in this movie who all looked alike, again, under their beards. These characters also acted nearly identically and liked to drift in and out of the film so often that I had no idea who I was looking at half the time.
Ah yes. My three favorite characters: Beard, Beardy and um...Beard.
The film does such a poor job with clearly identifying characters that it dissolves into a mess of "Well that Arab dude wasn't helpful. Hey Random Bearded American #3, there's another Arab dude. Let's ask him. Oh good. That info might be useful. Make sure to tell Random Bearded American #2. Jessica, could you please stop being a bitch? We know you're upset we haven't caught bin Laden. We're working on it. You're adorable when you try to act tough, though."
That brings me to Jessica Chastain. You know, it's one thing to have to sit through a very long film you're not enjoying. It's quite another to sit through a very long film you're not enjoying with a main character you can't stand. I found Jessica Chastain's character Maya to be grating and one-dimensional, that one dimension being "obsessed with getting bin Laden." This is her one defining character trait, and the only thing we ever know about her.
And she's also kind of a bitch and swears at her boss, since that's professional. I guess that's supposed to make her a "strong female character," but seeing little Maya standing at the numerous briefings with her arms crossed, lips pursed, and eyes glaring out under furled brow came across more like a toddler holding its breath until it got to watch more cartoons. I'm not saying that for a women to be tough she has to be Briene of Tarth or anything, but with as instantly confrontational and puffed up in her bravado as Maya is while being a shallow as hell character, she comes across more like the demon fiance in any random romantic comedy who is holding back the male love interest from being with probably Katherine Heigl and will end up falling into a pool with a wedding dress on or get a cake dropped on her head or something by the end of it.
I don't care how cool her shades are. She's still boring as hell.
The only redeeming quality I found in ZD30 was the last 40 minutes or so, which shows the raid on bin Laden's compound. It's the only part of the film in which it feels like anything of substance is happening, which makes sense because it IS the only part where anything of substance happens. And to be fair, it is a very well shot and surprisingly tense scene, despite the fact that we know what's going happen. But it's less about any kind of surprise in the plot and more about watching the process with which the SEALs carry out the assault. Of course, I had no idea who any of these people were, so I felt nothing for them as characters, but hey, that's been par for the course for 2 hours leading up to it. Why start now?
Ah yes, the run time. It always seems to lead back to that, doesn't it? Here's the deal, and the last thing I'm going to say about "Zero Dark Thirty":
"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" is 2 hours and 49 minutes. Everyone bitched and moaned and griped and whined about it being far too long, which admittedly it was. But you know what? Stuff happened in "The Hobbit." They fought goblins. And trolls. And wargs. And orcs. They flew on eagles. A ring of ultimate power and unimaginable evil was found. We saw 13 dwarves and a wizard cut their way through an army of goblins. We saw a goddamn dragon burn down a fortress built into a mountain. But no, that's "padded and overblown."
"Zero Dark Thirty" is 2 hours and 37 minutes long. That's only twelve minutes shorter than "The Hobbit." And you know what happens in that essentially identical amount of time? They water-board a guy, some car bombs go off, Jessica Chastain scowls at her boss a lot, and a bunch of Arabs get shot. We have all learned a valuable lesson. What is that lesson? F@#k if I know, but it's very important and you should give this movie Oscars. Roll credits.
How hard do you think I can type SYMBOLISM on my keyboard before it breaks something?
And by the way, what in the hell does "Zero Dark Thirty" even mean? I'm just wondering because the film never mentions it. That would have been nice.
Come to think of it, I don't care. It's probably military code for "pretentious."
Here's the trailer to "Zero Dark Thirty." Enjoy Jessica Chastain being uppity and Metallica's music actually becoming worse.
THE BOTTOM LINE - An insanely overrated piece of plodding, confusing garbage that is banking on the hope that you'll consider it a masterpiece because of who is directing it. Kathryn Bigelow has once again made a dull, full of itself snooze-fest that managed to irritate me even more than "The Hurt Locker," something I didn't think was possible. I miss "Point Break" Kathryn Bigelow.
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