Zero Dark Thirty - 2012 - 3½ Stars

Actors:  Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke
Director:  Kathryn Bigelow

Films steeped in history where one character knows he or she is right and the rest of the characters don't believe him or her are problematic.  We know whether the character is right or wrong, but that doesn't make his or her convictions about the rightness or wrongness of the claim any more dubious or certain.  People guess right all the time.  This is even more problematic when the 'history' we're talking about happened a year before the film's release.

Zero Dark Thirty would be an incredible film if I didn't know the story, but since I know the story, the tension is gone.  It's a stunning piece of film craft (and indeed, of US propaganda), and I got to study the film craft, because I wasn't distracted by the story.