Zero to hero

In theaters Friday: Admission, Olympus Has Fallen

New on Blu-ray: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Rust and Bone, Zero Dark Thirty

Stayed up till zero dark thirty watching Zero Dark Thirty last night. Man, I’ve been waiting forever to use all my military time jokes. While critics, fans and even war veterans are still debating the accuracy and necessity of the torture depicted in the film—yes, water boarding makes an early and gruesome appearance—the grandest moral dilemma presented in this behind-the-curtain look at the hunt for Osama bin Laden is not whether the means of extreme interrogation and violence justify the ends of eliminating terrorist threats, but something far more elemental and relatable.

How does a person who is so certain, so concrete of purpose and of mind, navigate a world founded upon the more liquid properties of probability and risk? Jessica Chastain stars as the whole-blooded, true-believing approximation of the real-life CIA operative responsible for locating bin Laden in urban Abbottabad, Pakistan, when most intelligence officials presumed he was in a cave in Afghanistan or even dead. The SEAL Team 6 member credited with shooting bin Laden has said of Chastain’s performance, “They made her a tough woman, which she is.”

When James Gandolfini’s senior level defense department official asks Chastain if, in her 10 years with the CIA if she’s ever done anything else for the agency besides chase bin Laden, her answer is a blunt, unafraid and pride-tinted “no.” And that refreshing sense of singular purpose is all he needs to hear to hand her his trust. It is true belief, not probable certainty, that cuts through all the bickering and tail chasing and consternation to bring about real change.

“Okay, 95% because I know certainty freaks you guys out, but it’s one hundred,” Chastain says when asked of the chance bin Laden was located in the compound where he was eventually discovered and killed.

Part vengeful Captain Ahab, part John the Baptist prophet, Chastain’s performance as a nearly lone operative who stays on target in a wilderness of agents obsessed with stopping the next homeland attack or covering their own rears is consistently riveting without coming off as overly showy Oscar bait. The fact that she lost at the Academy Awards to Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook) is probably a good thing. It speaks well of the subtly she brought to a role that could have so easily morphed into a tough-talking, ball-busting Michael Bay creation.

Shot in director Kathryn Bigelow’s cinema verite style—a couple notches cooler than Paul Greengrass’ jittery Bourne Legacy approach—there’s an oddly careening denouement to the film not because the still-riveting SEAL Team 6 climax is a ripped-from-the-headlines inevitability in the mind of the audience, but because this swift and violent resolution to a decade-long manhunt is equally predictable for our heroine.”

But as the SEALs celebrate their prize and back home Americans are poised for this surprise dose existential ease, Chastain still finds herself alone, certain of everything but what comes next. Because not every accomplishment comes with glee. Sometimes, all they come with is relief and the hard-earned knowledge that there’s no lasting satisfaction in the words, “I told you so.”