Directed by:
Paul GreengrassScreenplay:
Brian HelgelandCinematography:
Barry AckroydComposer:
John PowellCast:
Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, Jason Isaacs, Igal Naor, Raad Rawi, Said Faraj, Michael O'Neill, Faycal Attougui, Sean Huze (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
A lone warrior is left with one option: go off reservation to find the hidden truth. It is 2003, and U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) and his team of inspectors have been dispatched by their commanders to find weapons believed to be stockpiled in the Iraqi desert. Rocketing from one booby-trapped and treacherous site to the next, the men search for deadly chemical agents but instead stumble upon an elaborate cover-up that subverts the purpose of their mission. Spun by operatives with intersecting agendas, Miller must hunt through covert and faulty intelligence hidden on foreign soil for answers that will either clear a rogue regime or escalate a war in an unstable region. At this blistering time and in this combustible place, he will find the most elusive weapon of all is the truth. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (11)
A word that is often used in connection with cinema is "disappointment." I think I know why, but I’m not going to share it. Fears that Greengrass and Damon would merely swap running around the world's capitals for the dusty roads of Iraq have not come to fruition. Leaning on one spectacular screw-up by the Bush administration and Helgeland's script, they’ve created a compelling, rather conversational thriller that is given momentum by the restless cinematography and Powell's pulsating score. Expecting an action geyser is not worth it because Green Zone is, despite all the impressive set design, a rather modest film with no ambition to entertain, and yet is not at all afraid to point fingers at specific people. It’s based on the lesson that was the motto of a certain spirits advertisement: "There’s always a reason."
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It would not be dignified to compare this movie to the Jason Bourne series. Let’s overlook the fact that Green Zone does not have Bourne’s entertaining drive, has no compelling music, and takes place from beginning to end in a location that looks like a single dark construction site and tells us nothing about its characters. It is easier to compare it with Ridley Scott’s thematically related Body of Lies, which I rated with three stars and which entertained me more. Green Zone is just a black-and-white militaristic exercise with a directing style that has been applied more successfully and with more vivid colors in other movies.
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Paul Greengrass tried out the style he applied in Green Zone in two parts of the Borneo series, thus creating a prototype of a modern action hero set in a realistic environment and using top combat techniques, but one that is far from the action superheroes of comic or game adaptations and routine thrillers. Moreover, he moved from pure entertainment to a deeper reflection on a specific political problem currently affecting America. His Green Zone is an excellent war action film that also perfectly functions as a mapping of the roots of war against Saddam and the subsequent civil war in Iraq. The film is a synthesis of all the motifs that played a role in creating today's complex situation, namely amateurism on the part of strategists, manipulated information from secret services and the American government, underestimation of the watchdog function of the press and media in general, unpreparedness for long-term occupation, and logistical failure. Of course, the film has its flaws and the five stars I'm giving it are not flawless, but in this case, I am happy to add them because the film stands very high above the genre average. The fictional hero of the story, Miller, has too much initiative and is too independent in his thinking for a lower-ranking army officer (possible members of the armed forces will forgive me), and above all, he does not hesitate to disobey orders and defy authority in a significant way. Also, the handheld camera, which plays a dominant role in Greengrass's films, is unnecessary in some cases, and the film contains some minor logical lapses. I doubt, for example, that a wanted war criminal, whose likeness is on every American soldier's playing card, would be driving around the streets of Baghdad in a car registered in his name several weeks after the occupation. But the action sequences, be it shootouts, wild chases, or fights, are filmed in the highest quality, and the entire story is set in a functional environment and corresponds to what actually happened in Iraq despite the fictionality of the main character. Matt Damon has already tried out a similar type of hero in the character of Jason Bourne, and his work with the director is top-notch. The entire film is incredibly dynamic and captivating. Overall impression: 90%.
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I can’t avoid the word routine. Gritty editing and rawness are Paul Greengrass's main assets and also the thing he focuses on most in his films, so praising these them seems quite redundant, it'd be like being surprised that a car takes me from one place to another, with nothing else expected from it. The disadvantage of Green Zone is that the topic it deals with cannot be as personal for the viewer as the quest for truth portrayed by the physical person of Jason Bourne, where the viewer can feel and relate to every blow and thought. Here, it’s too global and you are thus detached from the main characters and there is hardly any close connection. The action is good, the pace is good, Matt Damon still knows how to fight, and the music is effective. It simply works well again, but it's only about the story, and that's not enough for me.
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A politically engaged Bourne in Iraq? I’d like to use a line from the movie “don’t be naive", but that wouldn’t be altogether true. As a comparison it rather fits. A lot. A shame about the last third of the movie, however, when it turns off the hitherto path of the story down over-simplified and naively presented political agitation, aimed in the right direction, but the delivery... (especially the last dialog between Miller and Poundstone is just beyond the pale; I would never have expected anything like that from Greengrass). P.S.: Although I understand that a book in newspaper article form which is a bureaucratic odyssey where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, or: “How the Yanks failed to understand that an Arab land after years of tyranny, sanctions and war is not the same as any State of the Union following a natural disaster" is darn hard to turn into a non-documentary movie, but why on earth make a movie about weapons of mass destruction or botched attempts at finding them if there is no mention of either in the book?
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