Official Trailer to Zero Dark Thirty

Currently enjoying its fair share of critical praise and controversy here and across the pond, Zero Dark Thirty heads to UK cinemas on the 25th of January, and Universal has just released a new trailer to tide us over in the mean time.

In it we're introduced via brusque and chilly voiceover to Jason Clarke's character, simply named 'Dan', who appears to be addressing a terrorism detainee in a cell. "I am bad news. I am not your friend. I'm not gonna help you. I'm gonna break you. Any questions?" we hear him say, presumably foreshadowing one of the film's more controversial plot elements: systematic and US government approved torture.

Indeed, there has been a bit of a hubbub brewing over the film's handling of this sensitive subject, with some critics arguing that the film inadvertently validates the use of torture through its results-getting depiction, though just as many others have been quick to rise to the film's defence, reinforcing Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's dense, detailed and thrilling approach to the material.

Heated moral debate around the film always seemed a given, considering the immense severity of the subject matter. Opening with reconstructed emergency calls from 9/11 and charting the ensuing investigative hunt that led to Bin Laden's cathartic demise, Zero Dark Thirty seeks to be a comprehensive document of a tumultuous and generation-defining time in American history, and as such is unavoidably emotionally charged. We'll report back with our full review of the film come January, but until then check out the new trailer below:

The hunt for Osama bin Laden preoccupied the world and two American presidential administrations for more than a decade. But in the end, it took a small, brilliant team of CIA operatives to track him down. Every aspect of their mission was shrouded in secrecy. Though some of the details have since been made public, many of the most significant parts of the intelligence operation-including the central role played by that team-are brought to the screen for the first time in a gripping new film by the Oscar®-winning creative duo of Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal.

Their account of bin Laden's pursuit and capture, vivid yet faithful to the facts, takes the viewer inside the hubs of power and to the front lines of this historic mission, culminating in the special operations assault on a mysterious, suburban Pakistani compound.