Learning from “Zero Dark Thirty”

New York Post film critic Kyle Smith has seen two previews of Zero Dark Thirty, the Osama bin Laden manhunt thriller that is opening in New York and Los Angeles just in time for Oscar consideration. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, the team responsible for The Hurt Locker, the film promised to be something more than an advertisement for Barack Obama, although the filmmakers famously had the cooperation of the Obama administration.

In the event, the film is already bothering liberals. It depicts the role of Bush administration interrogation policy in obtaining a key piece of the information that ultimately led to bin Laden and otherwise contributing to the discovery of bin Laden’s whereabouts. Its portrait of Obama is not necessarily flattering. And attentive viewers can actually learn something important from the film. Smith explains “why Zero Dark Thirty is a clear vindication of the Bush Administration’s approach to the war on terror.”

Attentive readers can certainly learn something from Smith’s New York Post column on the film. In case you missed it, it deserves your attention (and Smith has a little more here, where he fears that the film is too detailed and accurate, and therefore a valuable document to our enemies).

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