At times pulse-pounding and exhausting in detail, “Zero Dark Thirty” is an essential piece of filmmaking and a punctuation mark on a grim decade in American history. Whether it’s an exclamation point or question mark is open for interpretation.

The movie follows Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA agent who commits 10 years to gathering information on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. We first meet her standing in the shadows at a CIA black site as a colleague (Jason Clarke) employs “advanced interrogation techniques” on a prisoner who may have information on a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows bin Laden. (more…)