NYFCC gives 'Zero Dark Thirty' its top honors

The New York Film Critics Circle gave three cheers for Zero Dark Thirty, awarding the film a trio of honors: Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. Director Kathryn Bigelow's follow-up to her Oscar winner The Hurt Locker is even better than that movie, in my opinion. Zero Dark Thirty is broader in scope and more harrowing. Plus, it centers on the (successful!) hunt for Osama Bin Laden. The movie was already in pre-production when Bin Laden was killed, forcing writer Mark Boal to rewrite the script last-minute. I think the fact that the movie was originally
concieved as a story of failure makes the resulting film less hagiographic. It's just the straightforward tale of a CIA agent (Jessica Chastain) with a hunch that wherever Bin Laden's trusted courier is, Bin Laden must be there too.

This isn't the first time Bigelow has been honored by the New York Film Critics Circle. They previously gave her the Best Director honor for The Hurt Locker back in 2009. That movie, about bomb defusers in Iraq, also won Best Picture. Could this mean that Zero Dark Thirty could take top prize come Oscar time?

I still haven't seen another frontrunner, Les Miserables, but Zero Dark Thirty certainly has what it takes to win the Oscars. Gravitas tends to triumph when it comes to the staid Oscar stauettes, so that would raise the movie above another one set in the Middle East, Argo, which was more comic. However, Bigelow won just a few years ago, and under circumstances that can't be repeated. She was the first female recipient for Best Director, and the movie won Best Picture over the behemoth Avatar (which was directed by her ex, an intriguing piece of Hollywood history). However, Tom Hooper, who directed Les Miserables, won Best Director and Best Feature even more recently, for 2010's The King's Speech. There are so many potential stories of success, and deciding factors, like audience response, still in play. How will Zero Dark Thirty do at the box office, for example? Will the procedural story of a female CIA agent catch on with audiences who may have been expecting a male hero? For the moment, I'm with the NYFCC, and my money's on Bigelow.