I think I mentioned the other day that I had made a special trip to London to see a production by my AmDram group which was so far on the other side of appalling as to be out of sight - actually, that's not a very good metaphor because I wish to God it had been out of sight - and sound - and all sensory perception!
So today I decided to go and see Zero Dark Thirty on the utterly mistaken - I now know the hard way! - assumption that it was a film best seen in a cinema rather than my TV. Apart from the 'story line' being almost incomprehensible one was asked by the film makers to accept that a very young and attractive - natch! - female CIA officer spent 12 years of her career doing nothing but chase round the world looking for Osama bin Laden. She appeared to have no other duties, no outside life, no nothing, just chasing old OBL - well, not him, really, just a tedious multitude of whiskery rascals who might or might not know him! Easy to make a mistake, after all, it being a well known fact established back in the days of Empire that all natives look like each other, a tactic they use to fool the white man! Anyway, this lot totally confused me because I couldn't work out who was the 'baddie' and who was the 'goodie' as they all sort of hung around looking at each other suspiciously in the crowded streets of Peshawar, or Islamabad, or Timbukto, or it might have been Bradford. Apparantly they wasted years of their time doing this sort of thing - and wasted hours of mine watching them doing it.
The film opened with prolonged 'torture' scenes, although, as torture goes it was pretty milk and water stuff - well, mostly water, actually, poured over towels held to the suspect's face. Not a sign of a pair of pliers or a blow torch anywhere and if they show it in Germany I fear there may be giggles from the odd retired Gestapo officer if they are in the audience! I fear that the real CIA will cringe in embarrassment at this sequence because the techniques applied were totally crude and inept and I suspect - I hope! - that they are far more intelligent than that. Of course, during this, the little CIA girlie looked rather upset because, this being Hollywood 'n' all, you couldn't have the heroine stamping on his goolies with her high-heels and shouting, "Give him one for me!" No, no, you see, she's really, really sensitive so she has to look - pained.
The final sequence is the raid itself which, like most of the rest of this film, was incomprehensible. I mean, they had a scale model of OBL's house and compound and the attack force would have had a briefing and some training so you'd think the film makers would have used that to explain the plan of attack to us, the audience. No chance, it must have been TOP SECRET, or something, because all we see is men in big helmets with headlamps on their heads running around blowing in doors, killing people but trying to be nice to the 'likkle-kiddie-winkies' before pumping OBL full of so much lead they could hardly carry him.
Final scene of all, in which you would have needed a heart of stone not to burst out laughing (thank you, Oscar, such a dear boy!) was little 'Miss CIA' sitting alone in an air force transport and as the camera closes in we see a tear trickle down her face - 'cos she's nice, see; really nice, geddit; and sensitive, too!
I wonder what it would take to send the Navy Seals in to blow up Hollywood?