BOTTOM
LINE:
“Green
Zone” may not be a Bourne film as suggested in the previews,
but it proves to be a great thriller, with an honesty and authenticity
that questions the purpose of the Iraq War and the mis-handling
of it by the Americans to get a victorious headline and to achieve
their objective of removing Saddam Hussein.
THE
GOOD: Matt
Damon plays Chief Roy Miller of the US Army, who is searching Iraq
with his team for Weapons of Mass Destruction in the weeks following
the initial invasion in 2003. Miller is frustrated because every
site they inspect based on the intelligence comes up empty, and
he begins to question what is happening. This does not go down well
with his superiors, although he has CIA station chief Martin Brown
(Brendan Gleeson) on his side who knows that the “intel”
is faulty. Following his instincts, Miller goes out on his own to
find out what is happening and discovers a scandal that goes right
to the heart of the reasons why America invaded Iraq. “Green
Zone” is an excellent thriller, largely due to its honesty
and authenticity, both in setting the scene and in its performances.
Damon in particular does not just act like a soldier, he IS a soldier
and he makes you believe it. The rest of the cast is also perfectly
on song. The staging of the sequences and the attention to detail
is meticulous and engaging. Despite not being filmed in Iraq, director
Paul Greengrass creates images that really make you believe you
are seeing the real thing, and the use of computer generated images
to fill in the blanks is barely noticeable. The integration of the
invasion bombing at the beginning of the film is virtually identical
to the real footage we saw on television. Greengrass steadies his
camera a lot more than in his previous films, and despite so much
of it being handheld, the images are always clear and we always
know exactly where we are. Another great aspect to watch is that
this film gives you as good an insight as any film in to how life
is like for soldiers on the ground in Iraq; it will make you feel
angry about why they were sent there in the first place, which goes
to the film’s central point that officials in Washington used
WMDs as an excuse to invade the country and get rid of Saddam. Even
the way the American media was sucked in to the lie is covered,
with a subplot involving a journalist who reported on WMDs based
on the faulty intelligence. Miller asks her at one point: “did
you ever bother to check the validity of your source?” to
which she replies, “he was a high ranking official in DC?
He had the data!”. “Green Zone” is a winner, and
is engaging from start to finish.
