Phillip Seymour Hoffman Delivers One Final Great Lead Performance in the Brilliantly Measured "A Most Wanted Man"

A Most Wanted Man reminds us (as if we needed reminding) 
that Phillip Seymour Hoffman was an acting titan.

The life of a spy is not a glamorous one. It is not a life filled with globe-trotting chases, torrid love affairs and action-packed shootouts between dapper physical specimens, but rather a great deal of clerical work, slow surveillance and back-alley conversations between anonymously ordinary folk. It doesn't get the heart pumping; it systematically devours it. At least that's the approach taken by novelist John le Carré, whose take on espionage features a lot of political maneuvering and frustration, but very little sense of fun and adventure.

While that probably doesn't sound like the best sales pitch for a film, it's most certainly an apt one. And although such an approach might not seem the best for a movie, I can tell you that films based on le Carré's work have been some of the best of the last several years.

That doesn't mean they're for everyone. For instance, while I found Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to be one of the more rewarding films of 2011, Candace fell asleep around the halfway mark. It's hard to blame her -- we watched it in the middle of a five-film binge, and, on top of that, it is dry, dense and not easily penetrated (I had a similar experience with Zodiac, another moody, slow burn that I should really revisit at some point). 

I say all this as a lead up to a review of A Most Wanted Man, the latest le Carré adaptation and one of my favorite films of 2014. It's cut from the same cloth as Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, but the story isn't half as sprawling, so it feels more focused. For what it's worth: Candace did not fall asleep.

The story revolves around the efforts of an off-the-books terrorist investigation unit in Hamburg, Germany led by the disheveled and jaded Gunther Bachmann (the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Gunther prefers to play the long game, collecting information and making contacts within the Muslim community. This puts him at odds with Mohr (Rainer Bock), the leader or a rival unit with a more aggressive and entirely short-sighted approach, not to mention his superiors, men who allowed the 9/11 attackers to operate a home-base in Hamburg right under their noses and have thus developed an itchy trigger finger.

Willem Dafoe and Rachel McAdams bring dimension to their roles.

When Chechen-Russian immigrant Issa Karpov (Grigori Dobrygin) arrives in Hamburg seeking asylum and a large inheritance of dirty money, he becomes a prime target for both units. However, while Mohr wants to bring him in on suspicions of being a jihadist and go to work on him, Gunther wants to keep Issa free and covertly coerce him into donating his money to a supposed Muslim philanthropist (Homayoun Ershadi) to see if the philanthropist will reroute some of the funds to a shipping company Gunther believes to be a front for Al Qaeda.

The idea is to ensnare the philanthropist then use him to get to the actual terrorists, and a tacit agreement with a string-pulling CIA agent (Robin Wright Penn) buys Gunther three days to do things his way. That's no easy task considering he must turn a banker (Willem Dafoe) and Karpov's human right's lawyer (Rachel McAdams) in time to carry out the scheme. Plus, there's the question of if Gunther can even trust these outside officials to stay out of his way, especially in light of a previous failure in Beirut brought on by such bureaucratic cooperation.

This material fits director Anton Corbijn like a glove, as his last foray behind the camera was the similarly muted and restrained, yet atmospherically textured The American. Like that under-appreciated George Clooney gem, A Most Wanted Man is first and foremost a thoughtful and tightly-calibrated character study of a weary professional in a shady, soul-crushing line of work.

It's also a fitting last lead role for Hoffman. Perhaps the preeminent actor of his generation, Hoffman was an actor of tremendous range, but he specialized in playing bleary-eyed, inward sad sacks fighting against irrelevance. It's clear Gunther has made many personal sacrifices for his work -- for proof, just look at his relationship with his second-in-command (Nina Hoss), a woman with whom he shares a shorthand banter and more than a few longing looks. A scene in which the two share a kiss to avoid blowing their cover is as sad as it is charged, because it hints at the connection both have given up in their commitment to "make the world a better place."

Hoffman is as controlled and precise as he's ever been here, and yet the film grants him one last opportunity to nail blustery rage in his final scene. It's the tonal opposite of the scene that concluded Zero Dark Thirty, but intriguingly still hints at the same thematic point -- the hopelessness and disillusionment inherent in the spy game, a profession that takes and takes, but rarely gives back. A

David Fincher Masters Multiple Tones in Excellent "Gone Girl"

Gone Girl is one hell of a ride.

It’s extremely difficult to review David Fincher’s Gone Girl without spoiling much of the film’s twist and turns. What I can say is that it’s the type of tale that in lesser hands could easily play like a Lifetime movie, but that with this talented cast and crew is actually one hell of a ride. In many ways it reminded me of Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, another incredibly engaging, darkly amusing melodrama that was far better than it should’ve been.

Much has been written about Gone Girl already – with its most fervent fans arguing it taps into the zeitgeist, taking a satiric look at American values, idealistic marriages and tabloid culture, while the naysayers argue it’s just trashy fun.

I’d call it all of the above. While it’s clear this is a crackerjack genre piece above all else, Fincher weaves in some really potent ideas, particularly pertaining to gender politics, the importance of perception over truth and the ways quirks in a romantic partner can seem cute at first but then grate over time.

As one expects from a Fincher outing, the below the line aspects are all top notch. The cast is great too, with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike perfectly cast as Nick and Amy Dunne, a seemingly perfect couple with a crumbling marriage. The plot takes off when Amy goes missing and clues begin implicating Nick may have murdered her.

Affleck, so often miscast in traditional hero parts, has always faired best when exploring flaws and humanizing asshole tendencies, while Pike puts her natural screen chilliness, an occasional detriment, to great use here. I’d argue they both put up career best work, hitting each note perfectly in roles that run the gamut from intense drama to dark comedy.

The supporting cast is uniformly great, but special mention should be made of Carrie Coon as Nick’s supportive twin sister (she should really be a player in this year’s Best Supporting Actress race) and, oddly enough, Tyler Perry who, despite his boisterous screen history, totally nails it as Nick’s collected, cut-the-bullshit attorney.

There are some plot holes here that can drive you nuts, most particularly the way in which Amy gets out of a sticky situation with a former flame (there were cameras everywhere!), but I think that maybe that’s part of the point – a way to emphasize how perception and plays at emotion really do trump cold hard logic, sense and facts. This is amazingly illustrated by a late-in-the-game interrogation between Amy and the leader investigator in the film (a great Kim Dickens).

I’ve read some claims that this is a misogynistic film, a nightmare scenario that validates man’s worst fears about getting married, but that’s mostly a crock. While it does play with those notions, the book and script were written by a woman (Gillian Flynn) and Gone Girl has three of the strongest female roles and performances you’re likely to see this year.

Really, Gone Girl is a “have your cake and eat it too” movie – a totally tongue-in-cheek exercise in dark comedy that also manages to be a thrilling and involving drama that gets audiences feeling major sympathy for the wronged party. It’s thought provoking, amusingly horrific and tragically affecting all in one.

Needless to say, I’m a big fan of Gone Girl. It’s definitely the most fun I’ve had with a movie in 2014 and a no-brainer inclusion on my end-of-year best list.A

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part I" Changes Up Franchise Formula to Mostly Positive Results

Katniss becomes the face of the revolution in Mockingjay -- Part 1.

In a post Harry Potter world, The Hunger Games series is far and away the best of the onslaught of YA adaptions. I outlined my thinking on this in my review of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, but the gist is this: even though the plot here is just as high concept and ludicrous as those found in many of its contemporaries, there is a credibility to the series because it keeps everything on the human scale rooted in a great lead character played by an actress at the top of her game. As this series goes on, it's getting easier and easier to say it -- Jennifer Lawrence is outright iconic.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part I is another winning entry in the series, which is really saying something given all it has going against it. For starters, it doesn't center around a Hunger Games, and so it doesn't have the structure the first two films had. This adaptation was already going to have a meandering quality to it because of that, but then there's the fact that it's also being split into two films, which has only made it worse.

Splitting films has become a thing in Hollywood, but it almost always makes the films feel incomplete and is almost never necessary. At least with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there was a practical reason -- that book was huge and had the responsibility of tying together so many plot strands that making one satisfying movie would've been impossible. On the opposite end of that spectrum is Breaking Dawn, a two-part film in which so little happens, it's amazing they couldn't do the whole thing in about 75 minutes.

Mockingjay falls squarely in the middle of these two extremes. Splitting the book into two films certainly affords the opportunity to explore character in a way one film never could, but I'm pretty confident the narrative would've been better served without the split. Although the total Mockingjay experience is going to clock in at well over four hours, it probably would've worked best as a three-hour epic. At least 20 minutes could have been chopped off of this first part without doing harm (especially the manufactured drama about Prim's cat and the rescue mission that eats up most of the final quarter of the film and was no doubt trumped up from the books as a means to give this film an exciting ending).

But there's no use talking about what could have been. Mockingjay -- Part I is still an involving film, but fans of the series should know that it's definitely a major step back in the action department. While the first two films hinted at political maneuvering, this film puts such manipulations front and center.

Mockingjay -- Part I gives these frequent costars a chance to 

share some scenes together.

Other than Katniss, the two focal characters in this film are Plutarch Heavensbee (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), the games-maker from the last film who conspired to spring Katniss from the arena, and President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), the leader of the militaristic District 13 that is leading the revolution against the Capitol and President Snow (Donald Sutherland). In lieu of tournament with kids killing each other, the film spends a great deal of time showing their attempt to unite the districts and incite war with Katniss cast as their troop-rousing mascot. A great deal of effort is put on the PR aspects of war, so, in many respects, this latest Hunger Games film has more in common with something like Wag the Dog than it does with its direct predecessors (which explains why Danny Strong, writer of the political HBO films Recount and Game Change, has been brought on as a a co-writer).

The cast for this series is a huge strength and just keeps getting better and better. Julianne Moore is a solid addition and giving an actor as great as Hoffman more to do is always a great idea. Woody Harrelson gets some new notes to plays as a sober Haymitch, as does Elizabeth Banks as a humbled Effie, who has been added on here in a well-considered streamlining move (her role in the books was filled by lesser characters who had already been marginalized in the previous films).

As indicated above, Lawrence is a dynamo, and it's great to see her do bad acting when filming canned ads for the revolution, only to then see how moving she can be when giving a speech in the heat of battle or singing a soulful and moody song from her youth that is then morphed into a rallying song by the propoganda machine (major props to Lawrence and The Lumineers for bringing those book lyrics to life). Meanwhile, Josh Hutcherson remains the a stealth weapon of the series, conveying a lot of subtext in each of his interview scenes. On the other end of the barely-a-romantic-triangle triangle, Liam Hemsworth remains the weak link in the cast, but I'm not sure how much of that is on him, and how much of that is on the poorly defined character. For what it's worth, he does deliver in his big speech about the bombing of District 12.

Outside of the unnecessary splitting of the narrative, my biggest gripe with the film involves a deviation from the book that definitely rates as as a spoiler (you've been warned). While inter-cutting a rousing victory speech from Coin with Katniss watching a writing Peeta is a fantastic, theme-appropriate way to end here, I'm not a big fan of the overt acknowledgement that Snow allows this rescue mission to occur because of his "brainwash Peeta to hate Katniss" plan (which was more of a safety net in the books where the conversation between Snow and Katniss never occurred). It seems highly unlikely that Peeta would've actually been able to kill Katniss, and I just don't see how a shrewd villain like Snow would take that chance considering how much of a PR victory it would represent for the opposition otherwise. That's especially true considering he didn't bother brainwashing the other two captives. Why not just kill those two if he was going with this Peeta plan? Or, better yet, why not just kill all three? The whole thing worked better when it played like Snow was semi-duped as opposed to actively stupid.

While I'll probably always believe the series would've played best as a trilogy, Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- Part I is another good entry in an increasingly impressive series of films. B+

Tom Hanks Shines in Searing "Captain Phillips"

Once the accent settles in, Tom Hanks kills it in Captain Phillips.

Captain Phillips is a gripping, well-crafted film about a real-life Somali pirate hijacking that turned into an ill-conceived hostage situation. As he did with United 93, director Paul Greengrass presents the story almost like a documentary, and despite the facts being public knowledge, he infuses the whole thing with an almost unbearable amount of tension.

The film opens with two scenes designed to set up the viewpoints and concerns of our two leads –Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), the captain of a transport vessel to Kenya, and Muse (Barkhad Abdi), the fearless and desperate leader of a four-band pirate crew that will eventually hijack Phillips’ ship. The latter scene does a nice job of subtly showing why Somalis would turn to piracy, but the former is a tin-eared exercise – the one blight on what is a very tight and attuned script from screenwriter Billy Ray.

The film mostly sticks to the actual story, which lends the whole thing a no-bullshit credibility but results in a lack of the sizzle and depth that might have been included in a more fictionalized account. We learn very little about any of our characters, and while they all feel like real people, we’re mostly denied of the movie moments that would really sell their dimensionality. However, the measured, fly-on-the-wall approach creates a participatory feel, so it's really a strength and a weakness all at once.

At 134 minutes, the film is pretty long, and it does start to drag once the pirates take Phillips in their desperate attempt to salvage their botched takeover of the Maersk Alabama. That said, I think the extended sequence inside the claustrophobic lifeboat is important to get viewers into the cornered mindset of the helpless inhabitants, as Phillips becomes more and more convinced he will not make it out alive, and the pirates become increasingly terrified and delusional about how the situation will play out.

The extended time is also essential in building the sense of dread, and it really sets up the denouement of the film in which Hanks gets to drop the façade of resolute cool headedness and let all the bottled up pressure and fear come flowing out. It’s a strong film overall with great technical work across the board and ace support from newcomer Abdi, but I suspect Captain Phillips will be remembered most for these final emotional moments with Hanks. The man’s an all-time great, but his breathtaking vulnerability in the infirmary scene (a breakdown on which can be read here) may be the strongest moment in his illustrious career. B+

Messy and Even Silly At Times, “Trance” Still Mesmerizes

Vincent Cassel is unsurprisingly good in Trance, and I won't hold the
weird spelling of his character name against him.

After going all prestige with Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours, director Danny Boyle returns to his genre roots with Trance, a kinetic mind-bender that initially seems like a riff on heist films but ultimately establishes itself as a sexual thriller about hypnotherapy, memory suppression and female empowerment.

The film evokes Inception in its exploration of the subconscious and plays like a spiritual cousin of Side Effects (for my review, click here), this year’s other B-movie detour by an Oscar-winning director in which nothing is as it appears to be. However, despite loads of technical audacity, ace acting and undeniable watachability, Trance is mostly a mess of convoluted twists and silliness.

The action kicks off with a crackling monologue about art thievery from Simon (James McAvoy), a seemingly vanilla mid-level security handler at an auction house who orchestrates a daring heist at the behest of a gang headed up by the ruthless Franck (Vincent Cassel). Despite being in cahoots, Simon attempts to thwart Franck, resulting in a blow to the head that leaves him with memory loss, which proves a problem for Franck and his men once they realize Simon had somehow lifted and hidden the painting.

Enter Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson), a hypnotherapist who says she can delve into the recesses of Simon’s mind and find the painting, provided Franck cuts her in on the ensuing payday. From there, things get increasingly disorienting as the movie becomes a bonkers fever dream.

To say much more would give away too much of the plot, but I will say that there’s more to Simon than he thinks and more to Elizabeth than she says. Meanwhile, Franck’s in the middle, piecing it all together, while realizing there may be more to him as well (not in the secret agenda/hidden twist kind of way, but rather the “I’m more than what I’ve done” kind of way).  

A fancy looking visual doubles as some character foreshadowing.

That's crafty.

Once all the twists and turns are revealed, some of the seeming plot holes make more sense, while others open up. The most problematic ones revolve around Franck, who conveniently decides to turn to hypnotherapy because the plot needs him too, and does not grow suspicious of Elizabeth until far too late in the game.

Held up to scrutiny, the film is somewhat frustrating, and the climax involves quite a lot of explanation to make sense of it all. Making matters worse are the laughably silly moments interspersed throughout, particularly those revolving around Simon’s predilection for shaved genitalia and a silly denouement built around a video message on a tablet.

Despite these issues, there’s plenty here to like. The three principles are all at the top of their game, which is pretty impressive given just how tricky these roles are. McAvoy stretches in unexpected ways, and Cassel brings just the right amount of danger and vulnerability to his part as he continues to prove he’s one of the more complicated “bad guys” in cinema today.

Meanwhile, Dawson shows what she can do given a meaty role after being relegated to nothing roles for most of her career. Much has been written about how brave her performance is given the amount of skin she bares, but to focus on that would undercut her hypnotic performance, which is simultaneously confident, vulnerable, intelligent, shifty, and smoldering.

It’s also worth reemphasizing that the movie is a complete gas, and Boyle’s direction deserves a great deal of the credit for that. This movie is far from perfect, but Boyle elevates it through a sheer force of talent. Man’s got style to burn, the way he shoots and cuts this thing makes for a mesmerizing, off-kilter experience. B

Side Effects Offers Engagingly Pulpy Thrills

Need an oily screen presence who can be a patsy and a

master manipulator? Jude Law's your man.

When I first heard Steven Soderbergh was going to tackle a film focusing on pharmaceuticals, I instantly imagined a heavy-hitting exposé in the vein of Traffic. Then, when I saw the trailer for Side Effects, I thought “Oh no, ok, this is actually going to be a more focused ethical commentary on therapists’ increasing willingness to overmedicate patients.” There’s some of that in the opening reel, but Side Effects is ultimately much more concerned with being an engagingly pulpy psychological thriller about a wrongly accused man.

The film focuses on Emily (Rooney Mara), a woman whose husband Martin (Channing Tatum) has recently been released from prison after serving four years for insider trading. This causes Emily to sink once again into depression (she previously had a hard time dealing with Martin’s incarceration), leading her to attempt suicide and thus come under the care of psychiatrist Jonathan Banks (Jude Law).

Banks has no misgivings about taking lucrative consulting jobs for drug studies, but he does genuinely seem to care about his patients. He even contacts Emily’s former shrink (Catherine Zeta Jones) in the hopes of learning more facts about her condition. Banks places Emily on a new drug that controls her depression but leads to sleepwalking. Ultimately, it leads to a tragedy that drastically alters the lives of all the principles.

I’d rather not give anything else away – most of the fun comes from watching how things unfold. I will say that Soderbergh follows Magic Mike (read my review here) with another foray into a genre enmeshed in camp only to emerge with a grade-A cinematic experience. Side Effects manages to be a well-oiled character piece and riotous B-movie thriller all at once. It comes from the same general place as Fatal Attraction and Primal Fear, except its far leaner and lived-in thanks to that Steven Soderbergh feeling.

Most girls would not be depressed to have a doting Channing

Tatum return home to them. Rooney Mara isn't most girls.

There’s a great deal of craft in this thing, from the Soderbergh’s deft camerawork to Scott Z. Burns’ delightfully twisted script. Meanwhile, hot off the heels of his Oscar-nominated work in Skyfall, composer Thomas Newman contributes a hypnotically uneasy score. As was the case with their last collaboration, The Good German, Newman’s score may be the only thing about the latest Soderbergh film to be remembered come Oscar time (if, in fact, the Academy goes for it at all).

But it’s the acting that really sets the film apart. Mara continues to show a great deal of range, expertly essaying a tricky character that her Lisbeth Salander would despise. However, it’s Law who steals the show here by brining a whole spectrum of emotions to the table. He’s equal parts compassionate, smug, upstanding, paranoid, self-righteous, and vindictive. It really is a masterful performance, and a case of perfect casting. In Contagion, Soderbergh used Law’s inherent slipperiness to inhabit the bad guy who’s seemingly on the right side. Here, he inverts that setup for even greater results.

Side Effects supposedly marks Soderbergh’s final theatrical release. He’s got one more film to come – an HBO original about Liberace starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon – but otherwise, he’s headed off into retirement in the hopes of pursuing other artistic endeavors. I’m hoping he takes a few years to refuel and then comes back to us, and great little films like Side Effects are the perfect reason why. A-

The CIA Goes Hollywood: Reviewing Argo and Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty and Argo both focus on persistent CIA operatives.

The CIA is getting some time in the limelight this awards season, as two of 2012’s nine Best Picture nominees – Argo and Zero Dark Thirty – focus specifically on real-life, Middle Eastern missions and the organizational maneuvering that went into pulling them off.

Given this, it’s hard not to compare the films, especially since both share a composer (Alexander Desplat) and editor (William Goldenberg), contain a bevy of authentic supporting performances, and feature protagonists who essentially push for a Hail Mary pass to complete their assignments.

 In Argo, director (and producer… and star) Ben Affleck details how the organization extracted six Americans from a hostile Tehran during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis by going with their “best bad plan,” which involved pretending the group was a Canadian scouting crew for a cheesy, science fiction movie called Argo.

Meanwhile, in Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, the director-writer duo examines the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden in the wake of 9/11 through the eyes of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a key operative who identified Osama Bin Laden’s compound hideout and eventually succeeded in convincing her superiors to infiltrate it, despite a 60% probability that Bin Laden was actually there.

The end of both films is a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, Affleck and Bigelow each do excellent work in amping up the tension to the point that each film is an edge-of-your-seat thriller. That said, a fair share of credit should go to Goldenberg, who is Oscar nominated for his work on both films (he shares the credit with Dylan Tchenor on Zero Dark). With this impressive one-two punch, it’s hard to imagine the four-time nominee won’t steamroll his way to his first Oscar.

Despite a lack of strong characterization, Argo emerges
as a tense nail-biter.

Beyond those factors, comparisons between the two do Argo little favors. The film has proven to be a money-making crowd pleaser, which is a tremendous feat for a film set in the Middle East, and it’s also quite good within the limited parameters it sets for itself.

Affleck continues to grow as a filmmaker, and handles the period detail, pacing and constant tonal shifts (the film manages to be equal parts somber, light-hearted, and tense) with aplomb. I also enjoyed the creative use of storyboards during the establishing epilogue, particularly once I realized how it played off the film’s climactic scene.

But, when you boil it down, Argo’s mostly a feel-good, nuts-and-bolts procedural with the added hizzah factor of “Can you believe we pulled this shit off?” There are some interesting implications around the edges about America’s global responsibility, but the film’s more or less a dramatic riff on the capper genre.

There’s also almost nothing in the way of characterization. The Hollywood stuff with Alan Arkin* and John Goodman is played broadly for laughs, and, outside of Scoot McNairy’s nonbeliever, the bulk of the trapped Americans aren’t even given one stock trait. Meanwhile, although Affleck does nice understated work in the lead role, the development of the Mendez character left me wanting more. The fact that such a brazen plan worked is fascinating, but even more interesting (conceivably) should be the man with the audacity to come up with it and then the balls to carry it out. However, except for some sparks in a scene where he shoots down the lame-brained options his CIA associates have come up with, Mendez is largely a muted enigma. Part of me is impressed that Affleck restrained from making his character overly heroic, but it just seems a missed opportunity.

* Although it was largely expected, I still can’t believe the Academy nominated Arkin for this. He’s solid, but there’s almost nothing to the role and there were a bevy of more deserving performances out there. I’m partial to Javier Bardem in Skyfall and Matthew McConaughey in Magic Mike, but there are a multitude of other great turns out there as well. I mean, hell, a strong point could be made that Arkin gives the third best supporting turn in his own film (coming in behind McNairy and Bryan Cranston as Mendez’s boss).

Zero Dark Thirty has no such problem. Even though Maya is given absolutely no background (unlike the perfunctory marital/father baggage Affleck’s Mendez gets), Chastain is utterly riveting as the strong-willed, uncompromising field agent, who remains resolutely convinced that Bin Laden is not holed away in some cave as popular opinion suggests, but rather hidden in a major city with access to comfort and technology. As she puts it, “You can't run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave.”

Despite commercials that suggest an action-packed Navy Seal story, the first two hours of the movie are all about Maya’s painstaking search. And that was almost definitely the way to go with a story like this. Since we all lived through these events, a pure “this is what happened” account would’ve been a little redundant. Instead, what they’ve done here is give us a riveting story of obsession.



Jessica Chastain's forceful lead turn elevates Zero Dark
Thirty.

Late in the film, Maya is asked, “What other cases have you done besides Bin Laden?” and she responds by saying “Nothing … I’ve done nothing else, sir.” She’s a modern day Captain Ahab, except she actually succeeds in her mission, and is forced to live in the aftermath of her completed objective. As the Navy Seal team celebrates their victory, she stands apart, silent and alone. And in a closing scene that evokes the final tone of The Hurt Locker, Maya sits by herself in a cavernous air carrier with tears flowing down her face, unable to answer the question “Where do you want to go?” We’re left with the implication that the victory is bittersweet and hollow, that this woman has been robbed of her purpose and now faces a future of uncertainty and crippling emptiness.

A great deal has been made about the torture scenes in the film, with many suggesting the film is pro torture. That, of course, is total nonsense. Yes the film shows torture, and implies a kernel of information was obtained via such methods, but it makes no overt attempt to support such practices. Instead, the film remains morally ambiguous, and, it allows the viewer a peek at the inhumanity used in an attempt to keep the world safe. Not including these scenes would be a total whitewashing of the facts, and it would’ve made the film seem like some sort of propaganda. That’s all I’ll say on the topic, but for those interested, I’d recommend reading the piece author Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down and The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden) wrote for The Atlantic.

The film orbits around Chastain’s Maya, but there are plenty of other interesting performances laced throughout as well. Jason Clarke makes a strong impression as Dan, who is shown to be an intelligent and sensitive at times, but does not shy away from getting information by any means necessary, whether it’s greasing foreign businessmen or using torture tactics like water boarding.  An interesting choice was made to have Clarke clean cut in all of his D.C. scenes and to be sporting scraggily hair and a beard when working abroad. It’s as if he puts on a new face, and maybe even jumps into an entirely different mindset, when segueing into a far more amoral role in the fight against terrorism.

Jennifer Ehle and Mark Strong also stand out in the uniformly impressive cast. Ehle projects the same authenticity, humanity and sensitivity she brought to Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, and after entering the film in a wonderfully blustery rant at the midway point, Strong brings a great deal of nuance to Maya’s stern, yet ultimately supportive boss.

Ultimately, both films are excellent additions to the thriller genre, and I’m happy they’ve been so successful, since they typify the intelligent, well-crafted mainstream films the movie business needs more of. Argo B+, Zero Dark Thirty A