Green Zone

(2010)
The only thing I knew about this movie going into it was that Matt Damon starred, and given his track record, thats usually good enough for me. The movie concerns itself primarily with the story of Chief Petty Officer Miller (Damon), whose unit, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, is tasked with the mission of finding Saddams weapons of mass destruction. When Miller becomes frustrated at his inability to find any (largely because, of course, there werent any), he mouths off to the brass, who tell him to can it. But the CIA is listening, in the form of one Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), who, like Miller, is convinced the intel they have about the WMDs is faulty. When Miller is approached by a civilian one day while searching another empty site, he takes a chance that the mans tip will lead to something and ends up in pursuit of one of Saddams generals. While the action is a key part of the film, the questions the story raises are of equal or greater concern to the movie; Miller becomes convinced not only that his intelligence is faulty, but that the higher-ups knew this. He begins to question the larger strategy behind the invasion matters above his pay grade, sure but the movie becomes increasingly concerned with the larger picture as the story goes on. A very shrewd move on the filmmakers part was the inclusion of the character Freddie (Khalid Abdalla), the Iraqi citizen who comes forth at great personal risk to try and help Miller and his men and provides the information on the whereabouts of the general. Freddie puts a human face on the Iraqi people, and reminds us that bravery is not the sole province of soldiers, but is a trait found in every people, in every culture. The movies politics are front and center, however, and any pro-war/ prooccupation types wont be pleased by it. The film rightly upbraids the Bush regimes handling of the war and its aftermath (Both Miller and Freddie are given powerful lines of dialogue toward the end), and those who are blindly pro-American may have some issues with a movie that portrays a more open-minded approach to the topic and situation. Damon is excellent, as is most of the cast; Greg Kinnear is very strong as regime figurehead Poundstone, and Gleeson underplays his CIA spook nicely. Perennial bad guy Jason Isaacs plays a nasty special forces operative to the hilt, and Abdalla is excellent as Freddie, capturing the mans fear and determination in exactly the right mix. There have been many good films about what we have done to the middle east in the last decade (Syriana comes to mind most strongly), and Green Zone is one of the better ones. Its a taut suspenseful thriller and it raises questions about the invasion that should be raised (and granted, have been before); you can think and have your action movie candy at the same time, which is rare. My only quibble was that the ending was right out of a 70s movie, where the characters win a moral victory while the big bad old government just keeps doing whats wrong which is

all fine and dandy (and laudable), but you know, after eight years of Bush and Cheney and crap like the tea party, I dont think the right really cares if the left wins moral victories, so long as they win actual victories; and much as I enjoyed the film, Id like to see the left stop being satisfied with being correct and start trying to actually win in the real world. But, thats probably another film for another time. Go enjoy this one, its really very, very good. August 31, 2010