First trailer of Bin Laden manhunt film 'Zero Dark Thirty' debuts

Sydney -  The first trailer of an highly-anticipated film about the CIA's mission to capture and kill Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has been unveiled.

The trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty gives viewers the first glimpse of her controversial movie about the Navy SEAL operation carried out in May 2011 in Pakistan.

The film, which stars Joel Edgerton, Jessica Chastain and Mark Strong, was due to hit US cinemas in October, before the US Presidential election, but has now been shifted to December, The Daily Telegraph reports.

According to the report, the trailer is quite claustrophobic and offers little in the way of detail and plays up the secrecy with cryptic snatches of footage and heavy black lines that redact parts of the imagery.

"Oh my God, is that I what I think it is?" asks one character, but viewers can't see what she's looking at, while another shouts repeatedly: "Where is the last time you saw Bin Laden?"

The movie is Bigelow's follow-up to her Oscar-winning Hurt Locker, and has come under fire from conservatives in the US.

According to Republicans, the director was given access to classified files about the mission and that she in turn has made a propaganda film for Barack Obama.