Manhunt - Die Jagd auf Bin Laden

Don't expect a plot, storyline, character development or comedy. We all know what the story is. This is about how it was done.

This is a documentary that tells us what happened it great detail. We don't usually get access to how the CIA works and what they do exactly in normal times. After 9/11 weren't normal times with the threat of terrorism everywhere. HBO makes great documentaries with real facts. If you want to know more, it is worth it.

This is an HBO documentary about the hunt and the killing of Osama Bin Laden by the Americans. It's great to see an inside look at the team that was tasked to hunt for Bin Laden. Certainly there's a sense that some parts are being left out or glossed over. It's hard to determine whether it's a matter of personal views or actual secrecy requirement. But overall it's important to see what actually happened. I found the interviews with many of the people involved very compelling. Sadly, some of the main people weren't there. One in particular was killed in Afghanistan.

I went into the theatre expecting this to be a more sober, objective and documentary- styled version of the events depicted in Zero Dark Thirty, but I was very much surprised by what I ended up seeing. The interview objects, or characters if you will, with very few exceptions all struck me as having frighteningly little ability to question the events they were at the centre of on any moral level. It's possible that this is of the director's doing, but regardless I left the theatre with the feeling that the film was mostly about people defending their reputation as good workers among their superiors and co- workers after an office quarrel, and not even remotely about the larger moral questions of what the military and intelligence bureaus are doing to human beings in other countries. I was extremely disappointed. To me this film appears pointless. And in the light of how important and complex the events it circles around are, crushingly so. I also left the theatre with an ominous feeling of that if the level of intelligence displayed in this film is representative for the people in charge of some of the most powerful organisations on earth, then we're all in trouble.

I went into this thinking this would be about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. What I found, was a story about women investigators talking about their struggle to work in a male dominated organization.

I only made it about a quarter of the way in before I couldn't take it anymore. I figured, surely it can't all be about this, and must get better eventually. But it didn't seem to be improving. Perhaps it does get better after the quarter mark. However, I don't have the parience or enough trust in it to find out.

I had read/heard many of the stories talked about in this documentary over the years but it was very nice to see them all put together in one form.

It gives great insight into what truly goes on behind the scenes in the intelligence community that most people are not privy to.

Anyone using the mindset of comparing this to Zero Dark Thirty are going about things the incorrect way. Zero Dark was a glamorized Hollywood story that actually was a project about the failure to capture UBL until ST6 accomplished their mission. Once that mission was completed, the script for Zero Dark changed.

This documentary starts before anyone in the intelligence community even knew Al-Q existed and how their rise to prominence was dealt with along the way.

Manhunt should give those that watch it a great understanding of how years upon years of hard work can and does pay off.

While not glamorous, the most important people in the battle against those who commit evil are the ones you know nothing about.