But as much as Hollywood loves to hate bad guys — Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden — it rarely, if ever, imagines their demise before it happens. This seems an easy conceit for a film. Why couldn’t “Zero Dark Thirty” have been made in 2002, with the details of bin Laden’s death merely invented?
Perhaps because killing a rogue leader — even al Qaeda’s No. 1 — seems a bridge too far. Yet it is that bridge that “The Interview” appears to be the first to cross, even if the final version was edited after North Korea complained.