10 Most Intense Scenes In War Films

This scene is the climax of the search for Osama Bin Laden – the whole effort balanced on this mission.

Katheryn Bigelow has continually shown that she can direct brutally intense war scenes. Look at her depiction of a long-range sniper battle in The Hurt Locker for another example. Here, she renders war with a combined sense of brutal efficiency and vulnerability that gives the whole scene a terrifying intensity.

Bigelow manages this intensity so well as these soldiers slowly push through the compound, swiftly killing people as they do so. It's downright torturous to witness their brutal efficiency with the knowledge that all of this could go so wrong at any moment. All of these soldiers are at risk, we are made to feel. A bullet could come screaming out of the dark to take any of their lives at any moment. We see alternately through their eyes in POV shots illuminated by night vision, giving us a sense of pushing forward into the dangerous unknown, and in more traditional shots that give us a sense of the vulnerable tactical situation they are in. We watch as they navigate these cramped environments, gunshots occasionally and startlingly cutting through the tense silence.

It's a testament to the filmmaking in this scene that we feel this intensity despite knowing exactly what's going to happen. After Osama bin Laden's death was announced, his death and the mission were the talk of the media. And yet, in that scene, you really feel like you don't know what will happen, like you are trapped alongside these soldiers, unsure what each new second will bring.

It is intense, cold, and overwhelmingly immersive.