Cinematic War fatigue, a syndrome afflicting most Americans over the last six years that involves the understandable symptoms of choosing escapism as entertainment over ‘realism’, has claimed many victims at the box office. Many of these films weren’t necessarily worthy of much attention, anyway, either due to their ideological stridency (‘War is bad’), or jingoism (‘America Rules Ok!’). Before the recent Oscar success of The Hurt Locker, it was nigh on impossible to ever get anyone to even look at a film concerning, directly or peripherally, the Iraq War, the September 11 attack, or the continuing quagmire of the US’s empire building in the Middle East, unless it was packaged as a documentary which, much like the cable news buffet which is slowly rotting away the concept of journalism as anything but more entertainment, allows the viewer to choose which side of the argument he wants to have be reinforced by the filmmaker.
Which means that one must either applaud, or question, the choice by director Paul Greengrass to step not once, but twice, into the breach. Before his success with the last two Bourne films, Greengrass was nominated as Best Director for United 93, a compelling and brilliantly conceived retelling of the September 11 attack. Nobody watched it. Now, six years later, Greengrass returns with the film Green Zone, based on the best-selling “Imperial Life in the Emerald City”, about the early days of the US invasion of Iraq. It was a box office disaster, despite reuniting Greengrass with his Bourne star Matt Damon. Were its failures deserved, or was it just one more example of the country’s default setting of “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”?
Damon stars as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, heading up a unit that is patrolling Baghdad soon after the US invasion. When his unit is roasting some locals, Miller stumbles upon a notebook, which contains information that is of value to an assortment of people. One, CIA official Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), who wants the notebook for military intelligence. Two, Pentagon official Clark Poundstone (an oily Greg Kinnear, in full-on Don Rumsfeld attire), who wants to keep the intelligence from getting out. Three, journalist Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) who is in Baghdad to cover the war and, possibly, help drum up support for the invasion, much like Judith Miller and the New York Times did. Miller doesn’t trust any of them, and spends much of the film playing cat and mouse with them, all the while also trying to track down deposed Iraqi general Al Rawi who, after the US eliminated the Iraq military, is planning an uprising against American forces.
Anyone familiar with Greengrass‘s work (which also includes the terrific Irish film Bloody Sunday) will know what he is getting into. Hand-held camera work, which can prove to be either exhilarating or exhausting, vertigo-inducing action sequences, and close-to-the-bone storytelling, spared any superfluous scenes not directly involving the action. Damon, who has proven to be an unexpectedly excellent action hero, is uniformly fine, as are the supporting cast–in particular Kinnear, whose default mode of phony sincerity makes him an inspired choice as one of the cogs of the Military Industrial Complex. Several sequences are quite thrilling, with a number of heavily caffeinated chase scenes where Miller is both pursuer and prey. Somehow, however, it all adds up to something less than the sum of its parts.
To call Green Zone just ‘Bourne in Baghdad’ may be unfair, but there is a whiff of familiarity to the proceedings. The biggest problem, however, may just be that the story feels a little stale. The realization that the Bush administration, and the Pentagon, was lying and manipulative about the reasons for the war seems to be yesterday’s news to anybody beyond the cult of Sarah Palin. If Green Zone had been released in, say, 2005, the story of a soldier desperately trying to get to the truth of the occupation of Iraq would have been noteworthy in contrast to the ‘Mission Accomplished’ xenophobia and the ‘Support Our Troops’ car magnets manufactured in China.
Of course, as we’ve already discussed, nobody would have ever gone to see it, anyway. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Action/Drama/Thriller/War
Rated R
DVD Release Date: 6/22/10
[...] GREEN ZONE [...]