No Thanks!

A Response to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal

As readers know, I’m passionate about a lot of things including Sesame Street and the Iranian hostage crisis. I’m also a passionate hater. One of the things I really, really hate are movies directed by Kathryn Bigelow: namely The Hurt Locker (2008) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Bigelow has a thing for military history. It’s unfortunate that she’s dedicated herself to such a pro-American stance she can’t properly depict actual events. This post might make me sound anti-American, which I’m not. However, I believe this country has made some MAJOR mistakes and hasn’t really owned up to them. Rather, they’ve been sensationalized in film and promoted false narratives about real events. As a result, the general public’s engagement with these events is inherently flawed after viewing these films, which I’ll get into more soon. Anyway, this post is why you too should dislike Kathryn Bigelow’s work. If you haven’t seen either of these movies, don’t torture yourself by watching Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker is a lot less painful to watch if you’re truly interested (spoilers below).

The Hurt Locker is a fictionalized account of a bomb squad during the Iraq War. The film is a collaboration between Bigelow and Mark Boal, so he’s partially to blame. Boal was a journalist and traveled with bomb squads in Iraq in 2004. Apparently, that made him qualified enough to create a whole movie. Jeremy Renner plays Sergeant First Class William James, a tough guy who insists on diffusing bombs without proper gear. He lives life on the edge. One critic wrote that The Hurt Locker “feels incredibly real.”¹ However, veterans would disagree. Much of the criticisms concern Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) procedures. One site says the film is supposed to be portraying EOD procedures as a “metaphor" for “the emotional and psychological toll that war exacts on service members.”² I have no idea where this concept came from. I see no conceivable way in which this could be turned into a metaphor. Rather, it should be called out as what it was, improper depiction. I’m not saying Bigelow should be expected to leak military operations like that. However, she should’ve committed either to making this film accurate or making it true fiction, something she constantly tries to walk the line on. In another scene, James has befriended an Iraqi boy, who he suspects is a body bomb seen later in the film. However, he finds the boy alive and then cuts him off as an expression of grief. Again, this is something I don’t quite understand. Is it supposed to show his internal conflict over war? It just feels cheap. At the end of the film, James commits to another year of enlistment. As military correspondent and blogger David Axe wrote on this point: “Our parting shot is of our hero, who has failed, who got a fellow soldier injured and could not bring a child justice, returning to war. He’s effectively learned nothing.”³ Axe is right, James has learned nothing. Throughout the movie, over and over, he makes mistakes. Deadly mistakes. Yet, his continuance in his service is something meant to be lauded. I ask you, should it be? Here’s the best part: Master Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver sued The Hurt Locker and Boal for appropriating his experiences and stories. Of course, Boal won. He claimed soldiers don’t have privacy and the military gave Boal full permission to use his findings in any way he sees fit. The law works in very mysterious ways. In short, even Iraq veterans hate The Hurt Locker. If you have any self-restraint, you’ll probably hate it too.

Most of my criticism is reserved for Zero Dark Thirty. I hate this movie with a passion. It was so bad, I skipped a solid third of it and only watched the beginning and end. You might be thinking, “if you skipped part of the movie, how are you qualified to talk about it?” To that I say: this is my blog and I can do what I want! Plus, I get to explain what made it so bad and why I skipped the middle. Aren’t you curious? Zero Dark Thirty is a fictionalized version of the lead up of and raid of Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. It follows Jessica Chastain as Maya who works for the CIA as an intelligence analyst. It’s 2003: she’s at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan and participates in the interrogation (aka torture) of a Pakistani man with suspected ties to 9/11. By 2005, Maya has gained valuable information as the result of torture. Later, in 2009, one of Maya’s officer friends goes to Afghanistan to meet a doctor high in Al-Qaeda’s ranks only to be killed in a suicide bombing. Maya is therefore even MORE dedicated to finding bin Laden. Eventually, they find the compound. After a brief with President Obama, the CIA plans a raid on the compound. The film ends with the Navy SEALs entering the compound and killing bin Laden. Maya then leaves the Middle East on an empty cargo plane.

The main issue I have with Zero Dark Thirty is one shared by many critics and journalists: the film has a clear pro-torture stance. Call me crazy, but I don’t think interrogations done through torture are morally appropriate ever. The Bush administration is notorious for their use of torture during the Iraq War. Jane Mayer, who wrote The Dark Side about torture under the Bush administration also critiqued the film, highlighting that there is no part of the film that acknowledges or questions the morality of torture.⁴ She states that “Bigelow has portrayed herself as a reluctant truth teller,” however Bigelow doesn’t comment on the “‘enhanced interrogation techniques’” used by the CIA. How can she be a truth teller if she only presents mythical history that appeals to a very specific sector of the American public? Mayer rightfully clocks Zero Dark Thirty for its endorsement of torture, where the film highlights the concept that “brutalization brings breakthroughs.” Similarly, Peter Maass for The Atlantic argues that “The film fails to consider the notion that the CIA and the intelligence industry as a whole, rather than being solutions to what threatens us, might be part of the problem.”⁵ Lots and lots of critics, historians, reviewers, bloggers (the list goes on and on) condemn Zero Dark Thirty’s pro-torture stance. Even John McCain who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam criticized the film.⁶ That is coming from a man who experienced torture firsthand. Boal responded to critics by saying that the claims of the film as pro-torture “is preposterous.”⁷

Here’s another relevant critique: Zero Dark Thirty uses clips from the phone calls from Betty Ong and Brad Fetchet, two victims on flights hijacked in the September 11 attacks. Ong’s family requested that if the film win any Academy Awards (it was nominated for five and it won one), the filmmakers credit Ong.⁸ Like Ong’s family, the Fetchets requested the film donate to charities concerning 9/11.⁹ The film instead donated to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Neither Ong nor Fetchet had their families’ requests fulfilled. If anything, this shows a level of serious carelessness on Bigelow and Boal’s parts. I’d be willing to put money that they’d justify their usage by saying these voicemails are practically public access. However, they didn’t think how this would affect the families of Ong and Fetchet. Ironically, Ong’s family spoke out against the movie, highlighting that they do not endorse the torture outlined in the film.¹⁰ In my post about 9/11 formal and informal narratives, I talk about the commodification of the tragedy. This fits well into that. Bigelow and Boal appropriated the stories of Ong and Fetchet to fit their narrative about the War on Terror and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It’s sickening.

Much of what I’ve been talking about in my grad school classes is the concept of authority. Bigelow and Boal routinely take insane amounts of authority for their films. Boal is not a historian. Boal is not a researcher. Boal is a journalist who spent extremely limited time in Iraq at the beginning of the war. He claims that while in America he “didn’t have a good sense of what the war was like.” To make The Hurt Locker was his way of replicating “the environment of the war.”¹¹ If Boal did in fact take information from Sarver, he’s overstepping his shared authority with the military and its actors. Bigelow, when asked about the negative response to Zero Dark Thirty stated “I’m proud of the movie, and I stand behind it completely. I think that it’s a deeply moral movie that questions the use of force. It questions what was done in the name of finding bin Laden.”¹² I swear I’m not being sarcastic when I say this, but does Zero Dark Thirty REALLY question the use of force? Did I watch the same movie Boal wrote and Bigelow directed? That one was sarcastic. You should check out the whole interview I cited. It’s absolutely horrendous. To summarize, it’s Bigelow acting as a torture apologist in order to justify the film. Boal and Bigelow do not have nearly enough authority to make a film like Zero Dark Thirty. Boal’s experience is limited and Bigelow, as far as I know, has zero experience working either in the field or with veterans. They should not have made this movie. Some might ask, “should people then only be allowed to do work on topics they’ve experienced personally?” To that I have an answer: no, but you need to do a lot more research than Bigelow and Boal did. I believe that filmmakers have an obligation when making historical projects to work with historians directly. This brings me into my next topic: how do we distinguish historical fiction from reality?

Both The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty are works of fiction. They do not in any way have a “based on a true story” type of narrative. This is where it gets complicated. People are influenced both consciously and subconsciously when they consume media, all media. These films are fictional, but in their historical alignment they influence the public. In promoting a pro-torture stance, a subject often kept hidden to the American public in formal sources, Americans with no prior knowledge are influenced about the CIA’s actions in the Middle East. In some ways, this also fits in with my critique on Argo (2012). Popular culture ultimately influences viewers based on the film’s narrative, even when openly fictitious. If it feels real then it is mixed with fact, or in the worst cases, assumed as real. This movie had a massively positive response. In Manohla Dargis’ review for the New York Times, she claims the film “shows the dark side of that war.”¹³ If the film is truly a work of fiction, and it is, how can it be portraying a real war with any legitimacy? Clearly, viewers view the film as legitimate anyway. In a Letterboxd review by AangGaang from March 24, 2026, they said “I'm so glad I didn't see this when it released because I was younger and more impressionable. Operation Neptune Spear would have made me a victim of the Military Industrial Complex. My ass would've gone down to a recruitment office and enlisted.”¹⁴ That is a telling example about how this film, and film in general, is a powerful tool in influencing viewers.

So why did I skip the middle of Zero Dark Thirty? Easy answer, there was just too much immorality for me to stomach. I’m by no means a morality warrior. Sometimes I don’t recycle my plastic containers because I get lazy. I recognize that world politics are inherently complex. However, I don’t think torture is. The use of torture is kept secret because it is inherently problematic. Confessions under duress are conditional and unethical. Films promoting that are unethical as well. Zero Dark Thirty contributes to false narratives about the War on Terror. Namely, it makes the U.S. seem “right.” The CIA is infamous for its secret operations that harm Americans. The War on Terror isn’t too far away from MKUltra or Iran-Contra. Don’t even start me on Operation Condor. The CIA is not a voice of reason. Presenting it as such comes at a disservice to Americans. Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal are CIA and torture apologists. Their work doesn’t deserve to be lauded. It’s trashy and inconsiderate. In no way are these films well done. They don’t tell the truth about U.S. intervention and shouldn’t be awarded like they do. As a personal note, one reviewer said Zero Dark Thirty “blows [Argo] out of the water.”¹⁵ What an insult. To summarize, don’t waste your time on The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty. They aren’t worth it.

1. https://theindependentcritic.com/hurt_locker

2. https://www.ghostsofthebattlefield.org/war-in-the-movies/the-hurt-locker-wars-quietest-explosion

3. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/yes-the-hurt-locker-still-sucks-f41060a27b87

4. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/zero-conscience-in-zero-dark-thirty#ixzz2FEv7RPBo

5. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/dont-trust-zero-dark-thirty/266253/#

6. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/dec/20/john-mccain-zero-dark-thirty

7. https://web.archive.org/web/20121212124757/http://www.thewrap.com/awards/column-post/zero-dark-thirty-steps-line-fire-answers-critics-68781?page=0,0

8. https://web.archive.org/web/20130225002608/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/movies/9-11-victims-family-raises-objection-to-zero-dark-thirty.html

9. https://web.archive.org/web/20130228030449/http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57571228/9-11-families-upset-over-zero-dark-thirty-recordings/

10. See footnote 8

11. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-the-hurt-locker

12. https://web.archive.org/web/20130124234145/http://entertainment.time.com/2013/01/24/cover-story-kathryn-bigelows-art-of-darkness/

13. https://web.archive.org/web/20130114112639/http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/movies/jessica-chastain-in-zero-dark-thirty.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

14. https://letterboxd.com/aanggaang/film/zero-dark-thirty/

15. https://web.archive.org/web/20121125063907/http://entertainment.time.com/2012/11/25/zero-dark-thirty-the-girl-who-got-bin-laden/#ixzz2DHtkIabH