By Jonathan Fisher, March 28th, 2010
The most unfortunate thing for Green Zone is that its timing is off. Had this movie been made five or six years ago, perhaps it would have had a heavier impact. As it is, its thesis and outrage is ancient history. The movie, directed by Paul Greengrass, concerns a Chief Warrant Officer played by Matt Damon whose job it is to follow the American military's intelligence vis-a-vis weapons of mass destruction at various sites around Iraq. He begins to get annoyed, and suspicious, after he and his team siege several locations to find nothing but dust and dead Iraqis. He begins to question the veracity of the intelligence. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that at the end of the movie, Matt Damon discovers that there are no WMDs.
Green Zone opens with the typically riveting scene that we expect from Paul Greengrass, director of the last two Bourne movies, as well as United 93 -- an under-appreciated gem of his career. We follow the actions of a shady group of Iraqi insurgents on the day that the bombs began to fall on Baghdad in 2003. Fast forward to several months into the conflict, and Roy Miller (Damon) is beginning to suspect that America's intelligence is wrong (or as Team America would put it -- bad intelligence. Very. Bad. Intelligence.).
Miller raises just a hint of dissent at a meeting with the military's upper brass, and is immediately told to can it and follow orders. He soon finds himself confronting an intelligence agent improbably named Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), who is presented from the outset as the clear-cut villain, an agent of the Bush propagatory machine. Poundstone reiterates to Miller that he should suffocate his doubts and just get on with the job.
Miller's dissent is also noticed by Martin Brown (played by the big, beefy, but lovely Irish actor Brendan Gleeson), who becomes something of an ally in Miller's search for the truth about the source of America's intelligence. Also involved is a newspaperwoman named Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), whose stories about an Iraqi informant gave much credibility to the WMD claims.
This story, which could have been frighteningly convoluted, is told with simplicity and clarity by Greengrass and his screenwriter, Brian Helgeland. This is certainly a film in two parts. The first is the easy-to-digest action thriller component of the film. Take away the politics, and this is a taut thriller -- even if it falls away towards the end in a flurry of underwhelming revelation and hero-worship.
But it's impossible to deny that there is a political undercurrent to this film, and it's equally difficult to deny that it's outdated. Green Zone tries its hardest to be polemical, but it's tough to be polemical when the issues you're raising went out of vogue five years ago. These days, everyone knows that we were duped by the Bush administration. It's ancient history, and the Bush administration is a long-gone relic. Green Zone acts as though it's only just realised what a travesty of justice occurred.
Even if the political sideshow doesn't quite ring true, there is a bottom line of enormous competency about Green Zone. Matt Damon is a formidable action hero. Between this and his quirky, nuanced performance in last year's The Informant, Damon is proving to be an invaluable star. With his clean-cut all-American good looks and his sturdy screen presence, he's tailor-built for movies like The Bourne Supremacy and this one. But he also has an actor's brain, and a writer's brain (has anyone forgotten he won an Academy Award for his screenplay Good Will Hunting?).
Paul Greengrass is, as usual, an elegant and fluent director. He's one of the few film-makers around that truly knows how to use the ShakiCam effectively -- although, even Greengrass can't help himself from over-indulging in a few action sequences in Green Zone. The ShakiCam is one of the most overused film-making cliches these days. It obscures and nauseates, and is used by lesser film-makers as a mimic of style. Greengrass actually has substance to his film-making, but even he has not been immune to the poisonous effects of the ShakiCam movement.
One does leave Green Zone in two minds. The first mind wonders if it had travelled back in time, to a day in which the reasons for invading Iraq were still a fresh topic for evisceration. The other mind sits back for the ride and is entertained by a no-nonsense, smart thriller. Take away the politics and Green Zone works -- but the movie insists constantly on being about out-dated politics, so much so that they end up getting in the way a bit. Perhaps Green Zone also suffers from its misfortune of being released so soon after The Hurt Locker won Best Picture. That was a movie that mingled entertainment with polemics brilliantly. Green Zone, while a worthy addition to the genre, is not a total show-stopper.
Posts
1 comments: