Manhunt

An HBO Documentary Films presentation of a Passion Picture and Motto Pictures pro-duction. Produced by John Battsek, Julie Goldman, Greg Barker. Executive producers,Peter Bergen, Sheila Nevins. Co-executive producers, Kerstin Emhoff, Andrew Ruhe-mann. Co-producers, Diane Becker, Claudia Rizzi. Directed by Greg Barker. Based onthe book by Peter Bergen.

With: Cindy Storer, Nada Bakos, Marty Martin, Barbara Sude, Jose Rodriguez, JohnMcLaughlin, Stanley McChrystal.

Guaranteed to ratchet up the critical chatter surrounding the CIA and "enhanced in-terrogation," "Manhunt" also puts a very human face on the nearly 20-year hunt forOsama bin Laden, starring a thoroughly sympathetic contingent of female analystswho -- despite being scapegoated after 9/11 -- continued the chase to its world-shak-ing conclusion. This stylish, coherent rendering of a complex story will likely bebranded as the real-life "Zero Dark Thirty" and may flourish accordingly, but its realexposure will come through HBO.

Ironically enough, what may enhance the buzz around Greg Barker's atmospheric andoften entrancing docu is that it says outright what "Zero Dark Thirty" merely impliesabout torture: namely, that it worked. Some of the officers Barker interviews draw a di-rect line between extreme measures taken by the CIA and the knowledge that led to binLaden's lair in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed by Navy SEALS on May 2,2011.

Jose Rodriguez, onetime chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and one of Barker'sprincipal interviewees, has become the agency's most prominent torture apologist, andthe film takes what he says purely at face value. Rodriguez and agency vet Marty Mar-tin, who recruited local agents during the hunt for bin Laden and is easily the most col-orful subject here, also defends enhanced interrogation, despite the Senate IntelligenceCommittee's conclusion that torture did not elicit the revelations about bin Laden'scourier that ultimately led to bin Laden himself (the same link at the center of the con-troversy over "Zero Dark Thirty").

Perhaps the most interesting moment in "Manhunt" comes when Nada Bakos, one ofseveral female analysts who proved instrumental in the search for bin Laden and who

was on the ground in Iraq, is asked how and when Hassan Ghul, a bin Laden emissary,revealed the name of the courier. She smiles, almost Cheshire Cat-like, and says thename came up during a "debriefing" in Iraqi Kurdistan, thus prompting the question ofwhether Ghul was even in American hands when the name came out, and what exactly"debriefing" means.

"Manhunt" is dense with information and revelations, and Barker (director of the splen-did docus "Sergio" and "Koran by Heart") interweaves his archival footage, Philip Shep-pard's moody music and contrasting lighting to keep the film's sensibility nimble andshifting. In the film's most playful sequence, the byzantine quality of an evolving CIAinvestigation is illuminated by former acting CIA director John McLaughlin, who usesfour half-dollar coins and some deft sleight-of-hand to show how slippery the case be-came.

As explained by analyst Cindy Storer, who had been tracking bin Laden since the early'90s, few at the top listened when it was made clear what a threat bin Laden was to theUnited States, and then still wanted to know why Storer and her colleagues hadn't con-nected the dots. "Maybe because the whole page was black?" she says, not really laugh-ing.

Tech credits are tops, especially Joe Bini's editing.

Camera (color), Frank-Peter Lehmann, Erich Roland; editor, Joe Bini; music, Philip Shep-pard; sound, Steve Utt; re-recording mixer, Mark Rozett; associate producer, AssiaBoundaoui. Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (competing), Jan 22, 2013. Runningtime: 100 MIN.

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