Much has been said regarding Zero Dark Thirty’s depiction of torture and the death of Osama Bin Laden. Little has been said, however, of the fact that the movie meanders often, and is infrequently an exciting or entertaining work of art.

For the uninitiated, Zero Dark Thirty is a film based around the hunt and eventual assassination of Osama bin Laden (real life spoilers, by the way). It follows Maya, a CIA operative played by Jessica Chastain who has been pursuing bin Laden since she joined the organization, and her single-minded determination and confidence is what eventually leads her to her target.

The primary issue I have with the film is Maya as a character. She frequently acts entitled, such as when she tells the SEAL team that will be performing the raid that acts as the film’s climax and primary setpiece that they “are going to kill Osama bin Laden for me.” Maya treats every other character as her pawn and refuses to give anyone else credit. It’s a character trait to be sure, but it’s unlikeable as hell.

It doesn’t help that the majority of her dialogue, outside of the scenes where she gets incredibly angry at her superiors, is pretty poor. I honestly can’t tell if all of her lines were meant to realistically portray common speech, but even then, none of it sounds right. What confuses me the most is that the other characters have fine dialogue; I might even go so far as to call some of it good. Maya is a weakly written character who I can’t find reason to care for outside of the fact that she’s patriotic and determined.

Zero Dark Thirty makes another tonal misstep in its black-and-white take on morality. Very rarely does it ever take a moment to consider that maybe torture is wrong, even if it’s a necessary evil. When the torture scenes stop, characters complain and claim that more torture would get them what they need to find bin Laden. There is a single terrorist character that the film doesn’t paint as one hundred percent evil, and he’s out of the picture half an hour in. I’m not asking the film to be completely anti-torture or pro-terrorism, but when it approaches these issues with an absolutist morality and the conclusion is foregone, there is no tension, there’s no interesting conflict or reason to watch.

Unfortunately, the poor writing goes even further. The film uses acts of terrorism (buses being blown up, suicide bombers, attacks on embassies and hotels) as moments of shock that add nothing to the film at all. Of the five moments like this that I can remember, one of them truly surprised me even when it shouldn’t have, as it was reported upon extensively when it happened (no spoilers as to what it was). Some of these scenes result in character deaths, and, while shocking, they don’t serve any logical storytelling purpose, and in fact, make it less interesting and engaging through their absence. Stories that properly approach losing characters grow as a result of the death, not shrink. Zero Dark Thirty undoubtedly shrinks.

The worst part of all of this is that it’s married with technically excellent direction and cinematography. There aren’t any breathtaking shots, but everything is done well. The final raid is particularly harrowing, and the film is consistently good-looking, if, again, not outstanding.

Zero Dark Thirty was a disappointment for me in most ways. Even the positive things I can say about it aren’t enough to make a movie worth watching, and it doesn’t do anything terribly new, other than portraying certain historical events. This is the second time I’ve been unnecessarily hyped up for a Kathryn Bigelow movie simply due to awards buzz, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.