Director Kathryn Bigelow’s drama about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Zero Dark Thirty, has been a major topic of discussion in the past few days following its first positive critics screenings, and today the first clip from the film has been released.  We’ve heard plenty of great things about Jessica Chastain’s lead performance as a CIA analyst whose obsession with capturing bin Laden led to his eventual assassination, and this clip puts her promising work front and center.  We see a tense conversation between Chastain’s character and a CIA head played by Kyle Chandler as the two argue over what’s more important: thwarting terrorist cells on American soil or going after bin Laden.  It’s promising stuff, and I can’t wait to see the full film once it hits theaters.Hit the jump to watch the clip.  The film also stars Chris Pratt, Mark Strong, Scott Adkins, Joel Edgerton, and James Gandolfini.  Zero Dark Thirty opens in limited release on December 19th, then expands nationwide on January 11th.Click over to Yahoo! to watch in HD.Here’s the synopsis for Zero Dark Thirty:

For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar(R) winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) for the story of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man.

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