Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.It looks like a spoiler for the other Get-Bin-Laden picture, Zero Dark Thirty, but Kathryn Bigelow will not be enduring sleepless nights on its account.
The film has more in common with the Pentagon-approved Act of Valour, in which a US Navy SEAL team is given the collective salute, this time for taking out The World's Most Wanted in a daring dead-of-night raid. Director John Stockwell (Blue Crush), according to the press notes, "revels in moral complexity", though you wouldn't know it from a script that comes ready-mined with crude America-the-Righteous messages.
The SEAL training is standard shaky-cam stuff – stalking, yelling, shooting – with some lame interpersonal issues thrown in. It's contrasted against the CIA backroom bods who trawl hours of surveillance footage looking for clues to their man's whereabouts. Once they focus on a humdrum compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the drama gathers in momentum, if not in subtlety.
The closing shots of President Obama announcing the mission's success in May 2011 will bring retrospective relief to many: if it had gone wrong the 2012 election might have been a different story.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments