Video: "Zero Dark Thirty" trailer

I know, I know, the White House’s relationship to this movie is dodgy (albeit not as dodgy as it once was) and so none of us wants to admit that it looks good. But seriously: How could it not be good? How terribly amateurish would a film about the Bin Laden raid have to be for you not to enjoy it? We all know where it’s going and we all know we’re going to relish that scene immensely, so as long as it doesn’t bog down in heavy-handed foreign policy didacticism along the way, it’s a lead-pipe cinch to work. Some victories are so glorious that no serious artistic treatment of them can fail to compel. There may be “bad” movies about D-Day or Iwo Jima out there, for instance, but if there are, I haven’t seen ’em.

As long as they do right by the scene where you-know-who gets shot in the face, they’re golden.