Sunday, March 14, 2010
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Sunday, March 14, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Green Zone
A No-Spin Zone, Spun Out Of
Control
Matt
Damon as U.S. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller in Paul Greengrass's
political action thriller "Green Zone".
Universal Pictures
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Sunday, March 14, 2010
"Green Zone", shot in 2007 by Paul Greengrass, stars his "Bourne" action man
Matt Damon, this time thrust into a very clear missive: to sift through
misleading, if not downright false intelligence on weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq. The politics are transparent and while there are some good
moments of tension, "Green Zone" plays like a revisionist, or at least avenging
angel of a film. Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of
Iraq And Afghanistan Veterans of America enjoys a cameo in the film's
opening minutes.
The film begins in March 19, 2003 (it was March 20 in Iraq) at the start of the
American-led invasion of the country. Very clearly Officer Miller is on to
something, and his superiors are on to him. Missions to find weapons
supposedly in the lair of Sadaam Hussein are -- surprise, surprise -- fruitless.
Once this groundwork has been laid, the film, which has the kind of vertiginous
camerawork that will make some moviegoers vomit, becomes a predictable thriller.
It throws in a "sidekick" character who is an Iraqi, enlisted by Miller to
navigate the native land and help get to the bottom of a murky and sordid U.S.
government mess.
Other characters you will recognize: the persistent, plucky journalist who is
pushing to get information from people who want to protect it. The
nefarious figure in the government with the tightly-coiled smile and facade that
is paper-thin. You get it, and you've seen it all before. There's
nothing (new) to see here. The screenplay (by Brian Helgeland based on
Ravi Chandrasekaran's book Imperial Life In The Emerald City) spirals
out of control in numerous places, and like the film's hyperactive camera
vacillates, inserting action where plot holes and the lack of engagement are
conspicuous.
A film isn't necessarily good because it lays out truisms. Films aren't
good simply because they promote themes that feel self-righteous. How a
filmmaker cinematically renders such variables into a story makes all the
difference. Given such premises, "Green Zone" feels self-righteous,
carrying a reflexive urge to right wrongs in order to salve a conscience,
someone's guilty conscience. Mr. Greengrass, whose pulsating "Bourne"
films have reaped box-office rewards, crafted the riveting, powerful (and
controversial) "United 93" (2006), which some believed was a feel-good beacon of
propaganda, crafting heroism out of circumstances that some (doubters of the
official story of events of September 11, 2001) would call mythology.
While the doubters' postulations about the horrific events in New York nine
years ago remain unproven to a certainty, what is true is that parts of "Green
Zone" appear to echo the kind of propaganda unleashed on a fearful American
public in the "valiant hero" stories of Private Jessica Lynch and the late Pat
Tillman, stories which were later found to be completely false. (Amir
Bar-Lev's upcoming Pat Tillman documentary will lay out to scathing degrees just
how wrong the Pentagon was.)
While Mr. Damon doesn't do badly here as Officer Miller and Brendan Gleeson
plays the kind of CIA functionary similar to the composite "Mr. X" character
played by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone's much-throttled "JFK", "Green Zone"
which goes from A to B to Z to C, is in need of both spinach and a dose of
vitamins, but not a cup of coffee.
Ah, all those camera moves and plot pirouettes, and no payoffs. Sheesh.
With: Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, Jason Isaacs.
"Green Zone" is rated R for violence and language.
The film's duration is one hour and 55 minutes. There are occasional
subtitles in English, and the Farsi language.
FOLLOW
Read more movie reviews and stories from Omar
here.
Read Omar's "Far-Flung Correspondent" reports for America's pre-eminent Film
Critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times -
here
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