Zero Dark Thirty

I have been reading reviews of the film Zero Dark Thirty. The writers are quite convinced that the effort is worth the candle. I personally doubt it; they remind me of mediaeval savants arguing about how many angels dance upon a pin's head. It always brings to mind DeQuincy's On Murder Considered As One Of The Fine Arts

I am sorry to say that [there] exists in London... [a] Society of Connoisseurs in Murder.

They profess to be curious in homicide, amateurs and dilettanti in the various modes of carnage, and, in short, Murder-Fanciers. Every fresh atrocity of that class which the police annals of Europe bring up, they meet and criticize as they would a picture, statue, or other work of art...

Insert "torture" for "murder" and you have the current disputation:  torture as a murderous tease.
To argue Technique and Style, and to ignore Morality and Virtue is a grievous mistake.

Our age is not so much Secular as it is Amoral. It avoids virtue like the plague, from the market place to the halls of government to the home, virtue is treated like a homeless person.

Therefore, why should a critic speak of the vile nature of our entertainments, seeing that most of us are dead to the most basic concepts of virtue?
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