3. Waterboarding - Zero Dark Thirty
Much like Cloud Atlas' controversy, the complaints for Zero Dark Thirty seem to have largely come from people who have not even seen the film, though admittedly some politicians who
have seen it did write to Sony Pictures, expressing their displeasure at what they perceived was a distortion of the events that led to Osama Bin Laden's assassination. The film features a disturbing scene early on in which Jason Clarke's character waterboards a suspect in order to obtain information, with the political left saying that to include such a scene is to suggest that it had a role in finding Bin Laden, and that the film has glorified this behaviour. This is nevertheless a thorough mis-reading of the film; the scene is directed as frank but incredibly harrowing, and isn't as transparent as to treat this information-getting as what provided a simplistic through-line to Bin Laden's location, because it didn't. The film is merely suggesting that this sort of practise does take place, and that it may have resulted in some useful information being obtained sometime.