“The charge of inaccuracy is a poor thing measured against the potency of truth,” writes N.Y. Times columnist Roger Cohen in a 2.11 article. “Zero Dark Thirty is a truthful artistic creation, one reason it has provoked debate. I think the movie’s portrayal of torture is truthful: It helped at times but at others did not. It provided clues that might have been gleaned by other means.

“In the end the case for the unacceptability of torture is not best made by sweeping assertions that it is useless. The nuance of this movie builds a much stronger case that, whatever torture’s marginal usefulness, it is morally indefensible.

ZD30 screenwriter-producer Mark Boal told Times “he did not want ‘to play fast and loose with history’ — a statement held against him by several of the movie’s critics, most eloquently Steve Coll in The New York Review of Books. My sense, however, is that Boal has honored those words.

“Truth is art’s highest calling. For it the facts must sometimes be adjusted. Zero Dark Thirty meets the demands of truth.”