Ellington

"Zero Dark Thirty," directed and produced by Kathryn Bigelow, should have been called "Hurry Up and Wait," and then wait some more until Navy SEAL Team 6 does its job with exquisite precision. Teased as a dramatic thriller, the film creeps through a decade of needle-in-the-haystack intelligence work that leads to tracking and killing Osama bin Laden.

Bigelow and producer-screenwriter Mark Boal (who worked with Bigelow on the Academy Award-winning "The Hurt Locker") do not reduce the issues in the bin Laden hunt to fit tags of "good" and "evil." They use no melodramatic shortcuts. In fact, the movie contains precious little drama. After all, we all know how this ends.

When "The Event" finally happens, it seems like a denouement, not the high point of the film. This isn't one of those patriotic jingoist films where you do fist pumps to celebrate a "we did it" moment.

The picture begins without imagery. A black screen fades up with the words "September 11, 2001." Over black, we hear a cacophony of voices calling for help or seeking reassurance. "I love you," one voice says. Another says, "It's so hot, I'm burning up." Someone asks, "Am I going to die?"

The voices topple over each other and turn into indecipherable noise. We can't understand what is said, and the lack of imagery keeps us in the dark, which is how the entire country felt on that horrible, unforgettable day. 

The film picks up two years later at a CIA black site somewhere far from U.S. soil. A rugged, but affable guy (Jason Clarke) knocks around an al-Qaeda prisoner. "If you lie to me, I will hurt you," Dan says in a reasonable tone. Ammar (Reda Kateb) doesn't respond. Dan leaves. He tells Maya (Jessica Chastain), the junior member of the intelligence team, that she can watch the interrogation from a monitor. She indicates that she can handle what is to come. Maya possesses a razor-edge of sociopathic indifference toward dealing with terrorists.

Dan and Maya eventually coerce Ammar into divulging that an old acquaintance using the alias Abu Ahmed works as a personal courier for bin Laden. Maya devotes nearly a decade of her CIA career into assessing whether Abu Ahmed actually exists. It's a slow and painful process involving interrogation, torture, review of DVDs and dogmatic determination when the trail cools off.

The movie doesn't avoid the subject of torture; it embraces it and wrestles it into our psyches. We see graphic renditions of waterboarding, the dog collar exercise, exposure of a prisoner's 'junk" and a litany of other barbaric perversities consistent with so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Everyone breaks sooner or later, but is the information any good?

While the film doesn't endorse torture, Boal's screenplay suggests that torture was the way the CIA got meaningful information on bin Laden, and without it, the CIA would not have been successful.

The ambiguity in the screenplay has led to a highly publicized debate in the court of popular opinion. Boal has lawyered up, wrote Michael Cieply in a New York Times article. "Washington wants answers, and an industry fears the loss of advisers there."

It's a messy controversy, which means that "Zero Dark Thirty" is losing its edge for a Best Picture Academy Award.

Despite Bigelow's docu-drama directing, which earned her the Best Director Academy Award for "The Hurt Locker," and a strong cast led by Chastain, nothing in this film ever connects at a gut level. Maya is a lone wolf who is emotionally aloof and generally unlikeable. Clarke's character has charm, but he leaves the main action so quickly that we are left with an emotional vacuum. None of the other characters resonate, in part because Maya has no real relationships with them.

The film lacks a strong narrative pull. By the time the SEALs enter the picture, you will feel relief. The movie is finally over.