Article updated: 1/3/2013 5:31 AM

Bigelow's tension-filled drama bursts with raw power

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Maya (Jessica Chastain) arrives at a secret CIA location in Kathryn Bigelow's fact-based thriller "Zero Dark Thirty."

Kathryn Bigelow's fact-based thriller "Zero Dark Thirty" stars Jessica Chastain as a strong-willed CIA agent who relentlessly hunts for the mysterious Osama bin Laden.

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Navy SEALs raid Osama bin Laden's suspected compound in Kathryn Bigelow's fact-based thriller "Zero Dark Thirty."

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Whatever assumptions you might have made about Kathryn Bigelow's fact-based military drama "Zero Dark Thirty" are probably wrong, because Bigelow — aided by journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal — guns down the clichés and our expectations in her slow-fused explosive account of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. We may know how it ends, but how it gets there becomes the raw appeal of this dark and pensive spy procedural, fitted with an unexpected female protagonist based on a real CIA operative and played by Jessica Chastain.

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