War Pictures, the Good and the Bad - Zero Dark Thirty and The Covenant: Review

Making a film about war is a tricky subject as you are both trying to entertain while also making a profit from the awful reality that is war. Today I will be discussing two films which both try to some extent to discuss real world events while one did this well and the other did not. Lets begin.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

This is a gritty look at America’s justified or not War on Terror and the lengths they went to in their search for Osama Bin Laden including using so called “enhanced integration methods”.

While the politicking was interesting the extended runtime hurt it in the long run as it become tiresome and repetitive. Perhaps this was the point though in that director Katherine Bigelow was trying to show the nonsensical red tape our main characters had to navigate in the bureaucratic environment they found themselves in but it became a hinderance to the movie after a while rather than an insightful look into how cover military operations work.

Jason Clarke continues to be one of my favourite actors for the simple reason that I love listening to him yell. Something about his voice just gets me I don’t know why. Be it this or White House Down I need more films of Jason Clarke screaming angrily and pointing fingers.

Jessica Chastain is good here but her character at times unfortunately came across as a sort of Mary Sue. She is a phenomenal actress but her never failing confidence and inability to ever be wrong made her unsympathetic and hard to root for.

Kyle Chandler and James Gandolfini also round out a stacked cast with their brilliantly nuanced performances which both showcased a will to follow Chastain balanced with an understanding of the bureaucratic road blocks standing in their way.

The last forty minutes or so of this movie which chronicles the Seal Team 6 assault on the Bin Laden compound is still one of the most brilliant moments captured on film. Ultimately, this is a decent film that cannot get out of its own way to tell a streamlined and coherent plot.

Here is the trailer for Zero Dark Thirty:

The Covenant (2023)

I struggle to see how this movie has received so much praise. While the message it advocates is worthwhile the actual film is painfully mediocre and at times comes across as a shot for shot remake of Lone Survivor.

Jake Gyllenhaal is good here but not great. Everything from the costumes, the effects, to the lacklustre supporting cast made this whole film feel like a low budget straight to DVD action flick.

It’s bewildering to see that this has a 7.5 on IMDB, I am not sure what they are seeing that I am not.

Every plot point is predictable. None of the action is memorable. The characters are nothing more than archetypes that fail to present any sense of nuance and simply serve as a means for the movie to get from scene to scene while the audience cares none whatsoever for their well-being.

This is a film that I will struggle to remember by the time I wake up tomorrow. Guy Ritchie has gone from being a director whose films I look forward to with anticipation to one whose work I actively try to avoid as my time is valuable and I need not waste it on drivel.

Again, I am not saying that the message here regarding interpreters in Afghanistan being abandoned to the whirlwind of radical regime change is not worthwhile just that the film that tried to convey that message failed on every conceivable level which is a shame.

Instead of ending for the trailer for this undeserving film I thought I would include this piece from Vice News about the real Afghanistan Interpretors.