Finally feeling well enough from the last 6 days with the flu that I got out of the house tonight and saw Zero Dark Thirty.

Awesome!
Action packed!
Spy Thriller!
Long movie (2 & 1/2 hours) yet suspenseful throughout!

"For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden."

9/11/2001 was 1 of the worst days in American history and 5/1/2011 was 1 of the best days in American history.

A must see movie for any patriotic American.

-Gregg in Las Vegas

I thought it was alright. I expected more from the director of the Hurt Locker

ZDT features I think one water boarding scene. Other than that, nothing is terrible emotionally disturbing like some of the scenes in Hurt Locker.
Hurt Locker was by far a better movie. You spend a lot more time with the characters and they are much better developed. I get that the movie was intended to be about the story and the characters are just engines for that in ZDT, but it makes it feel fake and all of the actions unimportant. It's also very meta because no matter the downfalls Chastin's character faces, you know how the movie ends.

It's Hollywood. Expecting anything in a film, even for those apparently "based on true events" to be anything like realistic is expecting too much. From time to time there will be a film that stands up to the expections of those who know the area or the events, but it isn't too often.

Mike - I think the only one I've ever seen that was acclaimed to be as close to realistic as could be made was the series Band of Brothers.

Other than that, I don't watch any movie of that nature, my family has lived the horrors first hand, I don't care to review them on the big screen only to be insulted by inaccuracies - Vietnam, Korea, Bosnia, Kuwait, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan - our forces, are not, in my opinion, a source of entertainment.

i have no doubt you enjoyed the movie, and to you im sure it means something completely different than it means to me.

when i was in iraq, i was afforded the opportunity to see how infantryman and EOD react to the stresses of combat life, first and second hand.  its nothing the same.  when i watch a movie like hurt locker, it bothers me that they portray men and women dwelling on emotions that real life soldiers dont.  there is a very real problem of PTSD, but it has little resemblance to what we see in movies.  my first squad leader back in the 82nd airborne had fought in the battle of wanat.  i look up to that man, he was a hard ass that cared deeply for his soldiers.  my last platoon sergeant in the 82nd had just lost one of his privates to an EFP, the last combat related casualty in iraq(i wont forget that day...).  when i watch movies about the military(those like hurt locker anyway), i cant help but think back to those events and those i know who have experienced that kind of stress and feel that hollywood is making complete mockery of us. 

i guess its a soldier thing. 

Before I watch any military style movies I check up on the producer and the director to see what their angle is.  With two sons in the Corps it is rather close to me as well.  Besides that I have a number of friends that either are now or recently have been in the service, plus a number of retired military friends.  I have no use for a film that is purposely inaccurate or is intended to denigrate our men and women in uniform.  As a consequence, I watch very few war movies.

Band of Brothers was pretty close to the book, and represented the men of Easy Company 506 PIR 101st Airborne well.  It showed the horrors they endured and some of the mental horror, but it did so in a realistic manner.  Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks both have a very high regard for our military and our country, and they portray it in their movies.  Saving Private Ryan, although fictional, was as close to realism as you can get.  They were very careful in their portrayal of the characters and as accurate as they could be.

We Were Soldiers (Once and Young) is another good, and accurate film about the 1st Cav in the battle of the Ia Drong valley, but they involved Hal Moore, 1st Cav's commander and author of the book, in the production of the screenplay and the filming.  It is a movie I have trouble watching due to the closeness of my son's service.  Zero Dark Thirty and Hurt Locker, from what I know of them, I have no plans to watch.

Jerr