cinecephale I dont know what part, if any, of the truth this documentary shows, but it it interesting to see the human side of the fbi and cia agents. Some seem to live with a burden I wouldnt want to share. They make fascinating and excentric characters. Surprisingly, the actual raid and the murder of Bin Laden are never shown in anyway or form. It is problematic that the violence and moral pitfalls of the hunt stay very abstract, except for a few comments on black holes and torture.

thmslngbrd I went into the theatre expecting this to be a more sober, objective and documentary- styled version of the events depicted in Zero Dark Thirty, but I was very much surprised by what I ended up seeing. The interview objects, or characters if you will, with very few exceptions all struck me as having frighteningly little ability to question the events they were at the centre of on any moral level. It's possible that this is of the director's doing, but regardless I left the theatre with the feeling that the film was mostly about people defending their reputation as good workers among their superiors and co- workers after an office quarrel, and not even remotely about the larger moral questions of what the military and intelligence bureaus are doing to human beings in other countries. I was extremely disappointed. To me this film appears pointless. And in the light of how important and complex the events it circles around are, crushingly so. I also left the theatre with an ominous feeling of that if the level of intelligence displayed in this film is representative for the people in charge of some of the most powerful organisations on earth, then we're all in trouble.

UncleLongHair2 I saw this on HBO recently. It is a great counter-point to "Zero Dark Thirty" which, it is now even more clear, summarized and dramatized the work of a group of CIA analysts that spans many decades. The character "Maya" from Zero Dark Thirty is shown as a young analyst obsessed with catching OBL. The truth is that there were a group of analysts, mostly women, who were all collectively obsessed with catching him, and their work spanned a time frame much longer than many know, going back around 10 years before most of the public had ever heard of OBL.This movie sheds more light on what goes on behind the scenes and (without revealing any secrets or classified information) how analysts collect and organize the blizzard of seemingly unrelated data to draw conclusions and direct agents in the field. It is hard to imagine working on such an unbounded, complex problem for 10, 20 or even 30 years without reaching the goal, and then to finally and suddenly get there. It makes it clear that the credit for stopping OBL goes far beyond one analyst, one special forces operative, or one president, and is the culmination of dozens of person-years of hard work.I found the interviews to be very candid, much more so than I expected, and they touch on subjects such as how information is relayed between analysts and agents "downrange", how analysts can get comfortable with the idea of hunting people down and killing them, and whether or not "extreme interrogation techniques" are useful or morally acceptable. The CIA can have an image of being bureaucratic, incompetent, and occasionally brutal and arbitrary. However, the people interviewed come across as passionate about their work, dedicated, empathetic, and extremely human despite the intense jobs they have.Rather than just have people talk into the camera, the producers spiced things up with scenes of analyst whiteboards, connect-the-dots type animations, eerie footage of battlefields and locations in the middle east, dramatic but staged scenes of analysts talking while driving through well-known DC area locations, etc. This is primarily just eye candy but serves to move the narrative along and give you something to look at while they unveil the story. I didn't find this distracting but I can see how some people would.Overall well worth watching if you are interested in the subject and are open to a relatively favorable view of the CIA and its employees.

Robert J. Maxwell I don't know how someone can make a movie about as important a subject as the appearance of, hunt for, finding of, and execution of Osama bin Laden -- a subject for adult audience -- and then ruin it by presenting it as if it were a television commercial designed to sell pimple cream to thirteen-year olds, but they've managed to do it.Please don't consider this a full review. I was only able to sit through the first quarter hour or so before giving up on it. What the viewer sees are instantaneous cuts of photos of bin Laden, a short video clip, two talking heads from the CIA, a white board on which a disembodied hand scribbles some unidentifiable names. Sometimes there is a quivering shot of the white board with NOTHING ON IT. It was a week before I was able to sit up in bed and take solids again.The camera wobbles as if held by a drunk. The editor seems to have snorted a few lines and the director was on mushrooms. Someone ought to make a real movie about this historical event.Advisory: Dangerous to your mental health if you're not barely post-pubescent. Want to see a fine movie about the taking of Ben Laden? Try Katherine Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty."