A-List: Best Modern Spy Movies
By J. Don Birnam
July 28, 2016
1. Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
You may have heard that a woman has been nominated to be President (after 240 years).
Back in Hollywood, don’t think that nearly 90 years of the Academy have been much kinder to the fairer sex. But Kathryn Bigelow did make history in 2009 when she became the first woman to win Best Director for her surprising Iraq war drama, The Hurt Locker.
Yet it was her stunning follow-up, the Osama Bin Laden hunt story starring Jessica Chastain, that really showed the genius of her directorial touch.
The story is pretty straightforward - Chastain is an agent following a web of informants as she closes in on what at first she does not know is the biggest prize of them all in the war of terror. Mostly set in the streets of Pakistan, she pursues this deadly network through horrific explosions, threats to herself and friends, and gut wrenching loses.
With a female but not corny touch, Bigelow and Chastain humanize the spy in a way that Greengrass and Damon only wish they could. The latter do try - they try to make the amnesiac Bourne sympathetic in his loss of past and family, in his inability to connect to anyone. But it’s a trope after all, a figment of someone’s imagination.
Bigelow and Chastain’s story is all too real, and they convey it with a conviction that is as good as any male-driven spy movie, but also with the human and spiritual gravity that only they seem to be able to understand for its complexity.
The hunt and the outcome may be rewarding (and, indeed, Bigelow’s heart pounding action sequence finale is memorable in its use of music, lighting, shadow, and action - it’s truly a masterpiece of cinema and you should stop reading now if you’ve never seen it). But even that rewarding outcome comes at a human price. The horrific price of the indelible images, the unforgettable experiences, the knowledge that you may have betrayed your moral compass or even parts of your spirit.
It’s a spy movie on paper, but it’s a human movie in reality. No wonder they say women know best. How timely, no?
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