War is a man's game traditionally, and so is moviemaking. But with the Iraq-occupation film The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow earned her stripes, becoming the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director; the film itself won Best Picture. In the riveting new true-life detective story Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow goes bigger and bolder. She and her Hurt Locker writing partner, Mark Boal, argue that the U.S. battle against al-Qaeda was essentially won by a woman--a CIA analyst named Maya (Jessica Chastain) who spent eight years tracking down the hideout of Osama bin Laden.
The making of ZDT (in...