Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty follows her Oscar winning work on The Hurt Locker - a film that broached serious subjects and put them on the silver screen. Her latest effort - which is being talked up as another possible Oscar contender - arguably takes the tougher subject of torture. So have the American critics taken to the insinuation that the U.S uses the illegal practice to obtain sensitive information? 

It would appear so. Critics from all over the globe, in fact, have adopted the position of 'we really love it', giving the film a hugely positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. "Kathryn Bigelow proves herself once again to be a master of heightened realism and narrative drive in this retelling of the decade-long search for Osama bin Laden," say the Los Angeles Times. "The knockout punch of the movie season is being delivered by Zero Dark Thirty. Chastain is a marvel, and Bigelow and Boal top their Oscar-winning work in The Hurt Locker," say  Rolling Stone, while The New York Times say, in a wholly positive review, that it's "The most important American fiction movie about Sept. 11, a landmark that would be more impressive if there were more such films to choose from."

Zero Dark Thirty gets its limited release today, December 19th, and a full release on January 11th. In the U.K, it will hit cinemas on January 25th.