Directed by Paul Greengrass
Written by Brian Helgeland
Starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Brendan Gleeson, Jason Isaacs, Khalid Abdalla
Rated R for violence and profanity
Rating -1 bullet hole
There have been many Iraq War-centric movies since 2003. Many of them are not good. The best one, The Hurt Locker, just won the Best Picture Oscar. One of the strengths of that film was that it was apolitical. The strength of Paul Greengrass’s film is that it is not.
Matt Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller. He and his team of Army inspectors have been tasked with finding weapons of mass destruction which, as everyone knows, were the catalyst for the Iraq invasion which has just started in the film’s timeline. Chief Miller is frustrated. This is the third location they’ve been sent to that is empty. At a briefing, he questions the intelligence that is sending he and his team on these wild goose chases. An ominous Brendan Gleeson glares at him and leaves the meeting. At this point, I kind of rolled my eyes. Oh great. Here we go…the stereotypical government blowhard who is going to make Miller’s life hell for questioning the intel. Actually, no. Gleeson is playing CIA officer Martin Brown. Brown shares Miller’s frustrations and confides in him that he too is trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I appreciated this break from stereotype. Instead, the slimy bureaucrat is played effectively by the affable Greg Kinnear as intelligence officer Poundstone. Poundstone is obviously a very powerful man. He has a special forces squad who report directly to him and constantly clash with Miller’s team. Miller also meets Wall Street journalist Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) who is also on a quest for the truth. She has penned several articles in which her source - code named Magellan - gave her very credible information about the WMDs. But, now she is also beginning to suspect that Poundstone has his fingers even in that intel she’s been getting. Finally, Miller meets an Iraqi named Frankie (Khalid Abdalla) who claims to have information about secret meeting taking place with an Iraqi general named Al Rawi (Igal Naor). Miller believes that Al Rawi is his key to finding the truth, and the chase begins.
What I strongly admired about Green Zone is that while there are many characters, the plot does not get bogged down in these intricate complexities that make other espionage films like Syriana hard to endure. The script - by Oscar winner Brian Helgeland - lays out the detailed plot in a manner that is clear and easy to follow without pandering to the audience. The events of the plot are fiction but loosely based on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
Another asset of the film is in its pacing. Much of the film is a chase for a man and, in a much larger sense, the truth. It is filmed with a break neck pace and with Greengrass’s shaky cam (or queasy cam as some call it) style that he employed in the Bourne films and in United 93. There are many critics of this style, but I like it a lot. To me, this style is more effective than 3D in embedding you into the flow of the film.
Greengrass is obviously making a statement about the lack of intelligence that led us into war. He infuses real life events successfully with his own narrative. Much has been talked about the disbanding of the Republican Guard led to the current insurgency. Charles Ferguson’s powerful documentary No End In Sight talked about this in detail. Here, Greengrass uses this event as a key in creating unbearable tension to the plot.
It is this successful mix of politics and storytelling that is probably the film’s only weakness. The fact that faulty intelligence led us to war is nothing new. That aspect might have been more effective four or five years ago. But regardless, this is one terrifically crafted war thriller that manages to get your pulse racing without devolving into a mindless action film.
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