On accuracy and ambiguity: "Where there’s clarity in the world, there’s clarity in the film. Osama bin Laden was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. That’s clarity. And where there’s ambiguity in the world, there’s ambiguity in the film."
Boal: "If the general impression you get from this movie is that torture played a role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, that’s because that’s true. That’s a fact. It doesn’t mean they had to torture people or that torture is necessary or torture is morally right."
Chastain: “I believe that was Kathryn’s intention when she made the film—to open a conversation. She ends it with an unanswered question, Where do you want to go? She’s asking the audience, Where have we been, and where do we go from here?”
Dafoe: “She’s attracted to something instinctively, and then she researches it, and her research becomes an adventure. In the late ’70s there was a lot of interest in rockabilly and appreciation of ’50s outlaw culture, so she would go to clubs to scout people for their look and style, and worry about coaxing a performance out of them later. She was so interested in the slang and the idiom and the ritual of that world, which wasn’t really of her own experience. And she’s still interested in learning the language and rituals of hidden worlds. Just look at her titles—Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty. It’s like coded language and she’s cracking the code.”