REVIEW - MANHUNT

In plumbing the deepest depths of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, right from its inception to its conclusion, with clarity and startling candour, this documentary essentially fills in any blanks left behind from Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning Zero Dark Thirty. Director Greg Barker exposes details either unknown or not widely known, and uses interviews with central players in the years-long manhunt to add definition to some of the murkier points, or to enlighten the viewer on crucial specific details. Manhunt is so direct and its contributors so honest that you might be tempted to wonder if it could be a hoax. For such a fact-filled film, it benefits from an inbuilt sense of tension, even despite the well-known outcome. The interviews are fraught with strong emotion, and the editing elevates Manhunt from mere procedural to gripping feature film. With a focus on the characters of both those tasked with executing the American mission and those whom they are searching for, this is a documentary that avoids the potential coldness and detachment which could have pervaded its every scene, and Barker makes space for personal details by jettisoning most of the tedium and minutiae in the finer details of this search. He may be, basically, assembling pieces of a puzzle we already have, but he does so with an efficiency and a surprising directorial panache that greatly enlivens his film.