Depending
on who's watching, the popular and controversial film “Zero Dark Thirty” is
being hailed as a celebration of American exceptionalism, despised as
propaganda and dismissed as yet another Hollywood movie that blurs a line
between truth and fiction.
Others,
like Vic Hash,
a local combat veteran, won't even watch.
Hash,
who was injured by bomb blasts in Afghanistan, said he appreciates director Kathryn Bigelow's
work in the 2010 Academy Award-winning Iraq war movie, “The Hurt Locker,” but
feels a critical line was crossed in her latest Oscar-nominated film about the
10-year search after 9/11 for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
If
painful memories of his service were not enough to keep him away, he would
refuse to see it because it “uncovers the way we do business.”
“I'm
not against freedom of speech. But my understanding is that details in the film
were gleaned from people talking about things they shouldn't have been
discussing. It's a way to make money, but it gets a lot of people killed,” said
Hash, a retired Army sergeant first class.
The
film, which opened in San Antonio on Jan. 11, has stirred debate that in some
ways has helped promote it. Members of the U.S. Senate
Intelligence Committee want to know if the Central
Intelligence Agency improperly advised filmmakers, and have
blasted the movie for depicting brutal interrogation as crucial in the search
for bin Laden.
In
published commentaries, CIA veteran Jose A.
Rodriguez Jr. and former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden,
a retired Air Force general, said they do not believe classified secrets were
revealed in the film, which has been panned by liberals and conservatives.
Hash
said he's worried the film unduly credits President Barack Obama while
exposing intelligence tactics to terrorists.
“Even
if 1 percent of the film is correct, I don't agree with it being out there,” he
said.
Jeffrey Addicott,
director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's
University, has similar concerns. The 21/2-hour film sought to find
a “delicate balance” between informing moviegoers and withholding sensitive
information, but went too far in exposing methods of the CIA and the military,
who carefully follow the legal advice of “quiet professionals,” he said.
Addicott,
a former Army Special Forces senior
legal adviser, said he's discussing the movie with law students about its
interrogation scenes and “how mythology has overtaken the facts.”
A
political firestorm erupted over the CIA's use of waterboarding, which rarely
was used but is depicted extensively in the film, Addicott said.
“There
is no moral equivalence between us and al-Qaida,” he said. “We don't have to
apologize for what they did.”
The
film is filled with sudden explosions and bursts of gunfire. Dr. Harry Croft,
a psychiatrist who has counseled combat veterans with post-traumatic stress
disorder since the 1970s, said many veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan might take
pride in seeing the heart-pounding re-enactment of the 2011 raid by Navy SEAL
Team 6 on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan near the end of the movie, “because
we then took out the head enemy.”
The
film also may stir “more negatives than positives,” especially for vets with
PTSD, he said.
“It
kind of depends on the core symptoms and who you visit the movie with. It might
trigger too many bad memories — terrifying aspects of war, or people who didn't
make it back,” Croft said.
Lisa Pinto,
whose brother served two tours in Iraq, doesn't recommend the film for combat
vets, and hasn't seen any enthusiasm for it among the many she knows.
“I
don't know if it's too early, if they're not interested or if they don't want
to relive it,” said Pinto, a former television news reporter.
In
a Washington Post commentary, CIA veteran Rodriguez, who was involved in the
real search for bin Laden, said the film vastly overstated waterboarding and
other tactics for questioning detainees.
The
“misleading interrogation scenes” showing nudity and physical abuse eclipsed
the film's portrayal of other intelligence, such as electronic surveillance,
that led to bin Laden, he wrote.
A
character based on CIA officer Jennifer
Matthews, who died in a suicide bombing, was “wrongly” depicted as
“overly ambitious and less than serious,” he added.
Rodriguez
and Hayden, who wrote a commentary for CNN, said the film took artistic
liberties in portraying its protagonist, a CIA officer named Maya, as a lone
figure, often swimming against the currents of the agency's administration to
take action to get bin Laden.
Rodriguez
said “many” people deserved credit, including a “handful of officers, mainly
women” who embodied the “relentless focus” that the Maya character represents.
While
Hayden neither endorsed nor condemned the film, Rodriguez called it “well worth
seeing.”
Pinto's
review: It's “an awesome movie.”
“I
went into it knowing I was going to see a movie, not reality” she said. “You
can't tell the story 100 percent factually, if you weren't there.”
Source: Express News
