Green Zone
Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Written by: Brian Helgeland
Starring: Matt Damon, Brendan Gleeson, Greg Kinnear
Written by: Brian Helgeland
Starring: Matt Damon, Brendan Gleeson, Greg Kinnear
“Green Zone” has two good things going for it and two bad things working against it. The two good things are director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon, who worked together so beautifully in “The Bourne Ultimatum.” The two bad things are: one, that we already know the outcome of the film before it starts, since we know that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and two,that the film is going to be “Bourne Ultimatum” lite. In other words, Paul Greengrass has made another Bourne film without giving us the suspense to make it work. And for those who think things come in threes, the third is that our invasion of Iraq continues to cost us many lives and many more Iraqi lives, and has led to a civil war that we’re watching right now from afar, all the more horrifying because we caused it.
The story takes place in March of 2003, just after we’d gotten to Baghdad and Saddam’s army had collapsed.. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is assigned to lead a group of soldiers to find the supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction. They’ve been all over Iraq and so far haven’t found anything; one even turned out to be a factory making toilets. All the information has come from a single Iraqi source code-named “Magellan,” and you can read the real Chalabi as his name. An intelligence agent from the Defense Intelligence Agency named Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear in his most obnoxious persona) has vouched for Magellan and his information, but the local CIA chief Martin Brown (a wonderfully scruffy Brendan Gleeson) says Washington is lying. We all know now (we knew then) that Washington was indeed lying, and pretty soon Miller suspects the same thing. Who is this Magellan who is feeding us lies? He decides to get him and ask him the questions himself.
Now the problem for the film is do we find Magellan? What in the world should we do to this lying bastard? Greg Kinnear says it’s more important to get Saddam Hussein, which we did, than it is to find WMD. In retrospect he’s wrong, for a lot of reasons that Greenglass and Damon come up with. On the other hand, Damon is playing only a Chief Warrant Officer and must take orders from Kinnear.
So we have a suspense film without suspense; it’s not a good omen for the film. It reminds me of Costa-Gavras’s film “Z,” in which an independent judge finds out for himself that the Greek generals are behind most of the assassinations and corruptions of the country. He makes his case against them, they go to jail, but are soon out and running the country. Why did he subject himself to such a futile gesture? We feel the same thing in “Green Zone.” Why bother setting up good guys when you know they’re going to lose?
3/12/10
[return to home page]
The story takes place in March of 2003, just after we’d gotten to Baghdad and Saddam’s army had collapsed.. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is assigned to lead a group of soldiers to find the supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction. They’ve been all over Iraq and so far haven’t found anything; one even turned out to be a factory making toilets. All the information has come from a single Iraqi source code-named “Magellan,” and you can read the real Chalabi as his name. An intelligence agent from the Defense Intelligence Agency named Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear in his most obnoxious persona) has vouched for Magellan and his information, but the local CIA chief Martin Brown (a wonderfully scruffy Brendan Gleeson) says Washington is lying. We all know now (we knew then) that Washington was indeed lying, and pretty soon Miller suspects the same thing. Who is this Magellan who is feeding us lies? He decides to get him and ask him the questions himself.
Now the problem for the film is do we find Magellan? What in the world should we do to this lying bastard? Greg Kinnear says it’s more important to get Saddam Hussein, which we did, than it is to find WMD. In retrospect he’s wrong, for a lot of reasons that Greenglass and Damon come up with. On the other hand, Damon is playing only a Chief Warrant Officer and must take orders from Kinnear.
So we have a suspense film without suspense; it’s not a good omen for the film. It reminds me of Costa-Gavras’s film “Z,” in which an independent judge finds out for himself that the Greek generals are behind most of the assassinations and corruptions of the country. He makes his case against them, they go to jail, but are soon out and running the country. Why did he subject himself to such a futile gesture? We feel the same thing in “Green Zone.” Why bother setting up good guys when you know they’re going to lose?
3/12/10