To the world the manhunt for Osama bin Laden, the creator of al-Qaeda who, after denial in the immediate aftermath, took credit for the 9/11 attacks, seemed a never-ending task. As you can imagine then, it was rather unexpected when , on May 2, 2011 it was announced Navy SEALs had found and killed the terrorist leader. Kathryn Bigelow had already been working on a film on the topic (under the working title of Kill Bin Laden), but his discovery and death shifted its focus to something more grandiose. Although Zero Dark Thirty begins two years after September 11, 2001 the spectre of that day looms large over the film. It is, after all, the decade-long attempt to hunt down the man who orchestrated the whole thing and although there's other motivations at play (it's been the entirety of protagonist Maya's career), to a contemporary audience what initially sparked the war on terror is never far from our minds. If you're wanting something that delves into the social or political effect of the attacks then this isn't it, but to see what impact it had the CIA, a post-9/11 world often pushing them to extreme lengths, then there's nothing better than Bigelow's film.
