“Zero Dark Thirty” is an excellent chronicle of an essential part of our nation’s history, but it is too confusing for viewers who are not familiar with the proceedings.   This film is based on the true story of the United States’ search to find Osama bin Laden and his death by the hand of Navy S.E.A.L.S.

The film is undeniably well-made.  It’s professionally put together and the acting is flawless.  The soundtrack matches the mood of the movie: low-key throughout, only noticeable during the S.E.A.L. raid on bin Laden.

But even with all these positive attributes, the movie doesn’t succeed.  It’s too confusing. We were constantly asking each other what was going on and most of the time neither of us knew.

First, it’s hard to tell who’s who.  The only characters known for certain are Maya (Jessica Chastain), who leads the hunt for bin Laden, and Dan (Jason Clarke), an interrogator-turned-office worker who helps her. Because the film covers a decade-long period, a lot of people come and go.  Many times characters are mentioned or appear and it was a struggle putting names with faces.

Another obstacle to knowing who’s who is the foreign names.  There are obviously a lot of names that aren’t normally used in the English language.  As a result, a lot of critical plot points go over viewers’ heads because it’s hard to identify the important people involved.

Many people hate subtitles, but they would really help in this case with identifying names.

Moreover, the main character, Maya, is not likable   The viewers don’t care whether or not she succeeds.  For instance, she uses harsh and over-the-top language in a meeting with her superiors. The scene is supposed to be serious, but we couldn’t stop laughing because it was so absurd.  Any person who talks in the way that she does is not at the top of our list.

The climactic scene where the S.E.A.L.S. kill bin Laden takes too long.  Everyone already knows that bin Laden dies.  It’s understandable that the director and producer are trying to stick to the facts as much as they can, but when it comes down to it, the raid scene is just a little too long.  We started to feel antsy before it was halfway over.  Even after they killed bin Laden, the scene wasn’t over, but it was definitely time for it to end.  While it’s good that they stuck to the truth, it takes away from the intensity of the killing.

The biggest problem is that the story line is hard to follow.  We didn’t follow the original story and went in with no prior knowledge, which was a mistake.  The film doesn’t help viewers who are not knowledgeable of the original story understand what’s going on and it moves too quickly to catch up.  It feels like the movie assumes that everyone knows the plot and that the purpose is just to be a visualization of everything that we already know.  This is, of course, no help because the only thing we knew about the story was that bin Laden was eventually killed by Navy S.E.A.L.S. Knowing more background information would have created less work trying to figure out what was going on, and the movie would have been more enjoyable.

If you followed the original story, you’ll love this movie.  If not, be prepared to be scratching your head for two hours and 37 minutes.

Rebecca Driver is a Copy Editor and Shannon Vinton is a Multimedia Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.