Zero Dark Thirty (2012) is a movie about an essential time frame in our American History. It centers the decade long hunt for Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization that is most famous for being involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The movie starts out with torture scenes committed by the CIA against suspects linked to bin Laden and the al-Qaeda group. From soaking their faces with soaked rags to starving them, they eventually get what they want. Names. They get names and background information on people that eventually lead them to the big guy.
Someone that is new to the CIA, fresh out of high school, is a woman by the name of Maya. Though I’m not entirely sure if the person who found bin Laden was named Maya, I am positive that it was in fact a female! For a few months short of a decade from the 9/11 attack, she worked hard to find the man behind it all.
The movie shows her frustration and others’ frustration as no one seemed to believe that she had a reliable lead on the case. Sometimes they failed. For example, she was following up on a name she had found, and the squad leader didn’t send enough men to carry out the exploration. Or the woman working beside her was trying to spark a deal with bin Laden’s supposed doctor, and, through called off security, the base got blown up.
Maya tried to use all of her resources. She made frequent calls into her mentor that went back to Washington. She eventually had to threaten her boss to let her keep going in her investigation. She also sent her mentor to buy off the Kuwaiti prince with a Lamborghini just to get a bin Laden deliverer’s mother’s telephone number… with CIA funds, mind you.
Often times the American people have tended to complain about how long it has taken us to seek out hated terrorists like Hussein and bin Laden, but they aren’t aware of the extent that people have had to go and the amount of time it takes to locate such a well-hidden individual.
It is safe to say that for a year we knew where bin Laden was. Why didn’t we strike immediately, then? This fueled Maya’s frustration, as in the movie she writes on her boss’s window the number of days that they knowingly did not take action to capture bin Laden. Almost a year passes, and they finally get together the best qualified team to carry out the mission: the U.S. Navy SEAL team.
After reassurance that the mission will have a 100% success rate, Maya flies back to the U.S. to help inform and train the SEALS for the capture. And on May 2, 2011 the raid is executed. It isn’t so smooth, though. A few of the helicopters crashed on the compound, and women and children (supposedly kin to bin Laden himself) were fatally shot accidently.
Going through every floor of every building on the site, they finally find him and shoot him on the spot. With nearby neighbors and concerned Afghanis coming, they must quickly flee with his body and all the technology (computers and files) and intelligence they can fit into a duffel bag. Once they get back to the military base where Maya is, she then gets the opportunity to identify the body. It was in fact bin Laden.
Maya was truly an inspiration. She was a female, and I think this gives the movie more of an appeal. The film shows how the generations have changed. Women are capable of much more. They are able to help protect the United States of America and its safety. She did it with pride and courage. Coming straight out of high school, she may not have been the most experienced, but she persevered and came out on top. She found the head honcho terrorist in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The team celebrates, and Maya, on her plane ride back to the U.S., weeps into the camera tears of joy, I assume. This was a perfect ending for such a powerful movie on such a riveting component of our history. (706)
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