GREEN ZONE Movie Review

[Derrick]

GREEN ZONE

2010
Universal Studios

Directed by Paul Greengrass
Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Lloyd Levin
Written by Brian Helgeland
Based on “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran


Matt Damon has turned out to be one of our most interesting actors working today, hasn’t he? He’s done excellent dramas such “Invictus” “The Departed” and “The Good Shepard”. He’s done comedic turns in movies such as the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies, “Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back” and “The Informant”. He’s proven to be a damn good action hero as well with the three Jason Bourne films. He can even do the really hard to classify stuff such as “Dogma” and “Gerry”. He’s earned a place on my very short list of actors whose movies I’ll see just because they’re in it. Which is how I ended up seeing GREEN ZONE. Because of Matt Damon. It certainly wasn’t because of the director Paul Greengrass but we’ll get to that in a bit.

Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is a very frustrated man. He and his squad are stationed in Baghdad’s Green Zone from which they go forth into the war torn city to hunt for secret caches that supposedly house Weapons of Mass Destruction. The frustration comes from the fact that Miller and his men never find anything. In fact, it’s obvious that there was never anything in these locations in the first place.

Miller voices his concerns in staff meetings and is pretty much told to keep his mouth shut and do his job. Supposedly these locations where WMDs are kept are being supplied to Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) an American intelligence agent by a high ranking Iraqi informer codenamed Magellan. Magellan’s identity and location is a closely guarded secret from everybody. Including Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) who has her own suspicions about what’s really going on. She passes on her suspicions to Miller. As does CIA agent Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) who flat out tells Miller he’s never going to find any WMDs but maybe if the two of them work together they can find out why the pretense that there are WMDs in Baghdad is being perpetuated and force fed via media to the folks back home.

Miller gets a break when an Iraqi named Freddie (Khalid Abdalla) informs that he’s seen General Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor) in Baghdad. General Al-Rawi is on the Most Wanted List as he sat at the right hand of Saddam Hussein and Miller thinks that Al-Rawi might even be Magellan. And so the hunt is on as Miller and Brown desperately comb the city for Al-Rawi one step ahead of a Delta Force hit squad dispatched by Poundstone to kill the general.

GREEN ZONE starts out like a war movie but turns into a political thriller. The hunt for General Al-Rawi takes up a good chunk of the movie as the Matt Damon character navigates an increasingly twisted trail that weaves through the various American intelligence agencies. It quickly becomes apparent to him that half of them want Al-Rawi dead and the other half want him alive to find out from him why the other guys want him dead.

The acting in the movie is impressive. Matt Damon turns in his usual stellar performance and he’s not just Jason Bourne in an army uniform. Miller is a dedicated soldier who truly wants to do his duty but he wants to make sure he’s doing it for the right reasons. Greg Kinnear surprised me as the intelligence agent. Often in this movie it’s what Poundstone isn’t saying that’s more important than what he does say. Amy Ryan and Brendan Gleeson also provide sturdy backup and add considerable weight to the story.

But it’s Paul Greengrass who drops the ball on this one. Or should I say the camera. Greengrass is totally in love with Shaky Cam and he doesn’t mind using it. When Greengrass simply points the camera at his actors, keeps it in one spot and lets the actors do their jobs, GREEN ZONE is a really tight thriller. But here comes the action scenes and suddenly the camera is whipping wildly all over the place and its damn near impossible to tell what’s happening. Especially during a crucial chase scene where everybody is closing in on Al-Rawi. I could not tell who was chasing whom or who was shooting at whom and the entire scene was a horribly disorganized mess that had no suspense at all.

So should you see GREEN ZONE? I suppose a lot of your decision to see this movie or not depends on how much you A) like Matt Damon and B) How long you can take Shaky Cam before you get dizzy. The politics of the movie fall very squarely on the side of those who believe that Weapons of Mass Destruction was nothing but a massive scam to get The United States involved in the Iraq War. GREEN ZONE makes a political statement and makes no apologies for it. Which is as it should be. If you’re going to make a statement, make it and let the chips fall where they may. The acting and story are great and if it wasn’t for Greengrass and his stubborn refusal to keep a camera still for longer than two minutes I’d say go see it in the theaters. Because of that I’d recommend you wait until this goes to DVD.

Rated R: No sex or nudity but plenty of violence and the kind of language you could reasonably expect soldiers in a war zone to use.

115 minutes

[Eddie Love]

Too true, Derrick. Enough with the shaky cam! We get it. Things in post-invasion Iraq were chaotic. Point made, now let's settle in for some storytelling. I nearly moved my seat to the back wall of the theater just to try and get a clearer sense of what I was supposed to be looking at. I loved his Bourne pictures, but here Greengrass goes way overboard. It reminds me how James Ellroy took his hip, 50s staccato style to the point where his last two novels I don't think had a single sentence that was more than half-a-dozen words. The final chase scene here was so confusing I simply zoned out -- pun intended.

Also, I thought the film's politics were surprisingly unsophisticated and simplistic. Are we meant to think that falsifying the rationale for war was the act of one beady-eyed bureaucratic and not the policy of the administration? Plus, the climax has Damon sending evidence off to, among others -- Fox News and Chris Matthews? Yeeeeeah, when evidence did emerge -- the so-called Downing St Memo -- it was hardly heralded by the deus ex machina that Matt seems to be counting on here. (Also his flipping the corrupt reporter was awfully easy and he curiously lets her (and by extension the rest of the media) off the hook.)

I also think the character arch of Damon wasn't convincing. He seems to go from a dedicated US serviceman to a strident left-wing blogger by the end, and the transition doesn't feel honest. That character becoming disillusioned should have been less sudden and more dramatic. When he goes off at the end it felt like you were listening to the filmmakers and not something authentic from that character. (Similarly, I recently slogged through the lethal film Havana w/ Robert Redford and at one point he attacks this CIA agent in Cuba in a manner that was wholly anachronistic and completely out of character for an apolitical gambler Redford was playing.)

I thought I would love this movie and was frankly disappointed. I've read passages from the book this was based on it had lots of startling detail about the occupation.

Also, the picture wasn't nearly as good as The Hurt Locker -- which is strangely dubbed "non-political", but in fact has more insight into the conflict than then Green Zone.

[Derrick]

GREEN ZONE has the feel of a movie made to appeal to those conspiracy theorists who can point to it and say; "See! See! We told you the government lied to us!"

My whole problem with the WMD thing has been this: if there really was a conspiracy intended to use the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction as an excuse for the United States to invade Iraq then how come Bush just simply didn't plant some WMDs over there to be found?

Now if that sounds simplistic it's because that's the level GREEN ZONE operates on as Eddie so perceptively points out. THE HURT LOCKER is a much better film I think because it stays away from taking a political position and simply tells the story of soldiers in a war.

[Eddie Love]

I think the vignette with Jeremy Renner and the Iraqi kid said more about the character of the US occupation in Iraq than anything in Green Zone, all the while convincing people the film wasn't political.

Yes, it always puzzled me there was no throw-down plutonium in Iraq. But, I think Bush and Cheney thought the invasion would be a cakewalk and once victory was achieved no one would notice. (Also, GWB did at one point say they found WMD.)

[Derrick]

I don't think at this delicate point in American history it's possible to do an Iraq War movie and not be political but "The Hurt Locker" did a much better job of it than GREEN ZONE which practically waved it's political agenda in my face.

And again I say, not that I mind that. If you're going to make your political statement then by all means, go ahead and make it. Just don't get your panties in a twist when I either reject your political agenda or simply don't enjoy the way you present it.

From what I understand, GREEN ZONE has been officially labeled a bomb by Universal and I think it's not because of it's political stance but because of the horrible Shaky Cam technique. People want to go to movie where they can see what's going on. Movies that can use Shaky Cam effectively are few and far between. "Cloverfield" probably being the best example I can think of. And up until now, I thought "Quarantine" was the worst offender of the technique.