Abbottabad raid: First Bin Laden film to premiere tomorrow

Director talks internal conflicts, uncertain plot.

WASHINGTON:

Days before the first movie about the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden airs for the first time on Television, director John Stockwell admitted that he had no official cooperation, adding that one may “never know the entire story”.

“SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden”, which was shot in Khopoli, India and Santa Fe, New Mexico, documents the May 2, 2011 raid on the former al Qaeda leader’s compound in Abbottabad.

“The fascinating thing for me... was how much internal conflict there was within the intelligence community, within the White House and the Department of Defence, and all the ways it could have turned out badly,” he said.

The 90-minute film will be screened on the National Geographic channel on Sunday.

Much of “SEAL Team Six “ was filmed before the publication in August of “No Easy Day,” written under a pseudonym by a member of the real-life SEAL team who claimed that Bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed.

“We know the ending [of the operation to kill Bin Laden], but even to this day I don’t have certainty on the beginning and the middle,” Stockwell said.

Stockwell spoke to current and former SEALs, intelligence personnel and White House officials as part of his research, but only off the record, with no way to double-check their information. “I certainly had no official cooperation and I had no official access to anything,” said Stockwell.

“The truth is, 10 years from now, we may not know the entire story of this mission... Who’s to say what the real, completely factual version is?”

Cam Gigandet stars as the leader of the tight-knit SEAL team that also includes rapper Xzibit. Kathleen Robertson portrays an intense CIA analyst. Bollywood stars Maninder Singh and Rajesh Shringarpore play local CIA operatives who risk their lives staking out Osama’s compound in Abbottabad.

Cast as Bin Laden is Yon Kempton, who speaks no lines before he is shot twice and killed in a dark room with a Kalashnikov in his hand.

Just in time for US vote?

“SEAL Team Six” raised eyebrows when it was announced last month that it would screen for the first time on the National Geographic cable channel just two days before America votes. But, in an interview on Friday, Stockwell shrugged off suggestions that his film is some kind of prime-time Obama propaganda tool to sway voters less than 48 hours before polls open.

“It was never written or shot to do that,” he told AFP.

“Are there people out there who don’t know that it was on this president’s watch that Osama bin Laden was killed, and that this movie informs them of that? I would be surprised.”

The May 2011 dead-of-night operation by US Navy SEALs against the al Qaeda leader was a defining moment of Obama’s first term.

The president turns up often in the film but only in the form of archive footage – much of it pulled from the White House website.

Stockwell said it was the National Geographic Channel that picked Sunday as the premiere date.

“It has only one goal, and that is for as many people as possible to watch this,” added Robertson, speaking by telephone from New York. “They want ratings.”

The film goes on to cinemas from Thursday, in a 180-degree reversal of the way a movie usually goes out into the world.

“SEAL Team Six” also precedes another film about the hunt for Bin Laden: “Zero Dark Thirty” by director Kathryn Bigelow, who collected the best-film Academy Award in 2009 for the Iraq war movie “The Hurt Locker.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 3^rd, 2012.