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The trailer for a controversial new Hollywood film about the hunt for Osama
bin Laden was released, offering the first glimpse of the project that was
made with high-level cooperation from the Pentagon and the CIA.


Zero Dark Thirty, directed by the Oscar-winner Kathyrn Bigelow, is still in
production but has already provoked anger among Republicans who accused the
White House of giving film-makers access to classified intelligence to boost Barack
Obama ahead of November’s presidential election.


Mr Obama, whose approval ratings briefly rosed after he announced bin Laden’s
death in May last year, will not be depicted in the film.


In an attempt to head off accusations that the film was intended as propaganda
for Mr Obama’s re-election effort, Sony also decided to push back its
release date from October until December, after the election.


Mark Boal, who co-wrote the script with Miss Bigelow, denied that the film was
intended as sympathetic to Mr Obama. “There’s no political agenda in the
film. A lot of people are going to be surprised when they see the film,” he
told Entertainment Weekly.


Records released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that Obama
administration officials allowed Ms Bigelow and Mr Boal to meet some of the
military personnel behind the raid.


In one email, Michael Vickers, the US under-secretary of defence for
intelligence, said they would have access to a US Navy Seal planner as long
as they did not name him because he “shouldn’t be talking out of school”.


The highly-stylised trailer shows thick black lines creeping from the site of
the World Trade Centre in Manhattan and crossing the globe, representing
America’s decade-long hunt for the world’s most-wanted terrorist. The lines
eventually circle around bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where
he was killed in a raid by the Navy Seals.



STORY HERE