Director Paul Greengrass has never been one to shy away from hot topics. Sure, he dabbled in fictional, pseudo-documentarian thriller territory with the final two Bourne films, but he also helmed Bloody Sunday and United 93. The latter was subject to loads of "too soon" commentary, but Greengrass unabashedly tackled that 9/11 story with a surprisingly even-handed dedication to humanizing the film's villains.
With no more Bourne films on the horizon (Greengrass says he won't do another, and Matt Damon says he won't do another without Greengrass), it comes as no surprise to find the shaky-cam maestro tackling another saga of modern history. Loosely based on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Washington Post scribe Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Green Zone finds Greengrass and Damon cinematically embedded again, taking on the 2003 invasion of Baghdad and the search for elusive weapons of mass destruction.
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Damon stars as U.S. Army warrant officer Roy Miller, a headstrong, raspy-voiced leader who is frustrated by the fact that every WMD raid his team undertakes is met with negative results. The only person who seems to have legitimate intel is a one-legged local nicknamed Freddy (Khalid Abdalla), who sticks out his neck for the Americans by pointing them towards a secret meeting of Saddam Hussein's military elite. At the center of this shady cabal is an enigmatic general named Al Rawi (Igal Naor).
When Miller confiscates a seemingly important notebook of addresses, he finds himself in the warm center of a political power struggle. Brendan Gleeson plays the weathered CIA bureau chief who knows there are no simple solutions on the horizon. Greg Kinnear fills the "weaselly suit" role (a la David Strathairn in The Bourne Ultimatum) as a gung-ho Pentagon puppeteer. Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) has the thankless role of Wall Street Journal correspondent Lawrie Dayne, who helps sell the WMD story to the American public.
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Miller spends much of the first act taking business cards from these players while promising to consider their numerous offers. His character is astute yet naive, as he finds it hard to believe that the CIA and the Pentagon aren't necessarily on the same side. Eventually attaching himself to Gleeson's faction, Miller quickly uncovers disquieting information about the lack of WMDs as the film evolves into The Bourne Invasion.
Detractors of Greengrass' penchant for tightly shot, hard to follow action scenes will find much to gripe about in the murky third act. Still, the nighttime battle scenes (primarily shot in Morocco) have a delectable, Michael Mann-esque patina about them. Palm trees and orange fireballs rule the darkened skies, and there's an almost dreamlike quality to some of the ensuing chase scenes. The fact that it's sometimes impossible to tell who's on what side only adds to the verisimilitude of it all.
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While comparisons to The Hurt Locker are apt (both films share DP Barry Ackroyd), Green Zone actually feels like a more capable version of 2007's The Kingdom mixed with a Call Of Duty video game. The Hurt Locker notwithstanding, the problem with most of these modern war films is their fictional element. Lions For Lambs asked the world to swallow Tom Cruise as a Senator, and Green Zone asks its audience to accept that the entire WMD imbroglio hinged upon Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon.
As entertaining and pulse-pounding as its action scenes are, this disconnected hole at the film's center deflates its foundation. The acting is tight, the cinematography is grainy yet gorgeous and the script (by Brian Helgeland) is just snaky enough to deliver solid, politically tinged thrills. But recent documentaries like Heavy Metal In Baghdad spotlight the more interesting story this film could have told - that the sort of dangerous, explosive madness seen in the final act is not merely the wrap up to a Hollywood movie, but an everyday occurrence in the real Iraq. Grade: B
- Green Zone (2010)
- Directed by Paul Greengrass
- Written by Brian Helgeland, adapted from the book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
- Starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Brendan Gleeson, Khalid Abdalla
- Running time: 114 Minutes
- Released by Universal Pictures
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