10 Best Performances In War Movies

Few directors have managed to make war look less glamorous than Kathryn Bigelow. Oscar winner The Hurt Locker shone a light on bomb defusal operatives whose lack of concern about their wellbeing gave way for addiction. With Zero Dark Thirty, she doubled down on the psychological effects of warfare with a story about a great American tragedy turning into personal obsession.

Jessica Chastain plays Maya, a CIA operative at the head of the task force searching for Osama bin Laden. The character who aces their job at the cost of their mental health is hardly new, but Chastain takes this to remarkable extremes.

Based on a real agent, Maya is obsessive to the point of mania. Tough but flinty, she has given almost a decade of her life to the relentless pursuit of America’s number one target, and when - spoilers - they finally track him down, she captures a mixture of joy, relief, and emptiness perfectly.

It’s a great take on the obsessive character, one of the final images of the film being Maya processing and figuring out just what she’ll do now that she has accomplished what she’s been trying to do for half her professional life.