Zero IQ Thirty---Nadeem Paracha's Review of Zero Dark Thirty

[RiazHaq]

Recent Hollywood blockbuster, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, was quite an experience. Though sharp in its production and direction and largely accurate in depicting the events that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden, it went ballistic bad in depicting everyday life on the streets of Pakistan.

With millions of dollars at their disposal, I wonder why the makers of this film couldn’t hire even a most basic advisor to inform them that

1: Pakistanis speak Urdu, English and other regional languages and NOT Arabic;

2: Pakistani men do not go around wearing 17th and 18th century headgear in markets;

3: The only Urdu heard in the film is from a group of wild-eyed men protesting against an American diplomat, calling him ‘chor.’ Chor in Urdu means robber. And the protest rally was against US drone strikes. How did that make the diplomat a chor?

4: And how on earth was a green Mercedes packed with armed men parked only a few feet away from the US embassy in Islamabad? Haven’t the producers ever heard of an area called the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad? Even a squirrel these days has to run around for a permit to enter and climb trees in that particular area.

I can go on.

Zero IQ Thirty | Blog | DAWN.COM

 

[FaujHistorian]

Recent Hollywood blockbuster, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’, was quite an experience. Though sharp in its production and direction and largely accurate in depicting the events that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden, it went ballistic bad in depicting everyday life on the streets of Pakistan.

With millions of dollars at their disposal, I wonder why the makers of this film couldn’t hire even a most basic advisor to inform them that

1: Pakistanis speak Urdu, English and other regional languages and NOT Arabic;

2: Pakistani men do not go around wearing 17th and 18th century headgear in markets;

3: The only Urdu heard in the film is from a group of wild-eyed men protesting against an American diplomat, calling him ‘chor.’ Chor in Urdu means robber. And the protest rally was against US drone strikes. How did that make the diplomat a chor?

4: And how on earth was a green Mercedes packed with armed men parked only a few feet away from the US embassy in Islamabad? Haven’t the producers ever heard of an area called the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad? Even a squirrel these days has to run around for a permit to enter and climb trees in that particular area.

I can go on.

Zero IQ Thirty | Blog | DAWN.COM[url]

It is good to point out things that the director/writer missed. It is a good/challenging exercise for any movie and not just this one.

But then

who is saying 0 dark 30 is a documentary.

It is not!

It is just a feature film, meant to talk about taking down a sworn enemy.

And in that respect this film does an OK job.

They show how Americans can put their resources together and catch a rat even if it is hiding in a far flung corner of the earth.


Pakistani intellectuals should be happy that they show Arabs and not Pakistanis in the movie



In any case this is not a happy or jokerish / Bhaand puna time, Instead we should be mourning the fact that the rat was hiding in the middle of one of our cities.

We should be doing some soul searching, some introspection that how on earth a self-sworn enemy of the USA was able to live amongst us, marry multiple wives, and have a litter of kids in our country. While we got AID from USA and were happy to be the "Major Not-NATO Ally".

The film or more precisely the whole fiasco shows that our 200 million people strong country is not cared for by us the Pakistanis.

We are willing to drag its good name (of all the names we have Paaak Saaf Pakistan), the land of clean people, the land of righteous people, the land where people do not cheat and lie, and deceive or get deceived.

How Ben Fing Laden was able to cheat, lie, deceive, and put dirt in our eyes for so long.

And no we cannot simply blame our police and our army or Gadari or Mush for incompetence. We all got maligned because our country's good name got maligned.

These are the things, these are the thoughts that must go through our heads,

and not some billboard in the movie that happens to be written in language not prevalent in our beautiful country.


Usually NFP does good job, but on this one, he goofed up and missed the entire point of the movei. the who fing point.



peace