Osama Bin Laden is dead. The chilling and detailed ZERO DARK THIRTY directed by Kathryn Bigelow (the first woman ever to win an Oscar for Best Director: THE HURT LOCKER) and written by Mark Boal tells us with great suspense and precision of the ten-year hunt for the terrorist leader, and his execution by Navy S.E.A.L. TEAM 6 on May 2, 2011.  ZERO DARK THIRTY– the BOSTON SOCIETY OF FILM CRITICS best movie of the year and winner of 4 Golden Globe nominations–is sure to be a front runner at the OSCARS this year.

Jessica Chastain plays the brains behind the brawn. We first see Maya, the leader of an elite intelligence team, observing an interrogation/torture session. She’s wearing a hood, and we are shocked when she removes it, to see her red hair tumbling out, and underneath a delicate-looking woman. Her initial squeamishness about water boarding to extract information,  gradually gives way to resignation, numbness, and ultimately callousness in pursuit of a mission.

The woman has a job to do, and she tackles it with fierce logic, hyper-tenacity, and deep intuition. She has zeroed in on a man named Ammar whose suffering we witness and as viewers, have to make our own peace with. Do the ends justify the means?

These scenes have provoked controversy and some argue, have invalidated the film; torture as a technique to extract info leading to the discovery and eventual killing of Bin Laden has been officially denied. The filmmakers, however, have decided to shine a light on the various weapons in the CIA’s arsenal, and have clearly decided that it was reasonable to conclude that some info, somewhere along the line, over the ten years of this manhunt to end all manhunts, which led to Bin Laden’s eventual demise– had been extracted under duress. I think it’s a safe bet.

Maya’s relentless and initially fruitless pursuit is dogged by one terrorist attack after another. Bombings explode from London to Islamabad and Saudi Arabia, ratcheting up the tension and Maya’s resolve.  There’s an excruciatingly tense scene involving her female colleague (played by the apple-cheeked Jennifer Ehle) and potential informants gaining entry to a military base.  It’s arguably the edgiest scene in the film.

There are fewer than usual cliches – the inevitable scenes of impatient and irrational bosses screaming at Maya to find “people for us to kill.”  Politicians haggling, C.I.A. director’s (James Gandolfini) hulking appraisal of her acumen–is she on the right track? Is she the woman for the job? Or should they get a man?

Chastain, ironically, plays it cool and calm in contrast to her emotional male colleagues who want action NOW. She’s quiet and determined to get her man, and gradually accumulates a series of clues, coincidences, names and numbers that lead her to”know” that her target is– despite hard evidence– there, in a large, heavily guarded and remote house outside Abbottabad. When the S.E.A.L. team is assembled and preparing for the mission, it’s not at all clear that the man they’re after is actually there.  But someone asks one of the Navy Seals, “What part convinced you?” and he answers, “Her confidence.”

What follows is a dead of night, step by step infiltration of Bin Laden’s compound; we along with the SEAL team stare though infrared glasses, moving through a labyrinth of rooms, and ultimately into Bin Laden’s inner sanctum. History has recorded the outcome, and the onscreen verisimilitude is astonishing. It may as well be documentary footage. We are as close to being there as we could be: cinematically embedded.

The last scene finds Maya sitting all alone in the cavernous hold of a cargo plane, ten years worth of adrenaline draining out of her, as she heads who knows where?  It’s silent. It’s over. Or is it?  It’s a disquieting ending to a film that has reserved moral judgement and laid at our feet– for better or worse– the complex reality of what actually happened and how. Now we’re left to decide what it all means and where do we go from here?

DO NOT MISS ZERO DARK THIRTY.