It's so much easier to see the glory of war from a distance. From many thousands of miles away or the remove of decades. So much easier then to speak of greatest generations and by implication the glory of their efforts. A fairly prominent New York critic has praised Zero Dark Thirty for so thoroughly showing the dark side of war. As if there were any other side. Of course, any war will have its varied experiences, its moments of bizarre juxtaposition, its examples of bravery. But it's a grim, inhumane business. Zero Dark Thirty , written by Mark Boal and directed with brilliant assurance by Kathryn Bigelow, takes us right into the dark heart of the action. The war in question, in the rather Orwellian Newspeak of the previous (and present) administration, is the "war on terror." At times this action is quite slow, the following of leads and suspects over many years, the interminable wait to make decisive moves. At other key ...