Special credit should go to producers who invest in yet another movie about the Iraq War. Box office returns have been poor for recent war dramas. "The Hurt Locker," for example, nominated for nine Academy Awards with the chance that an Oscar will go to the first female director ever, brought in under $19 million so far, yet it was released back in June of last year. Its opening weekend took in all of $145,000. Think of Abel Green’s headline in a 1935 edition of Variety, "Sticks Nix Hicks Pix," meaning that farmers do not like movies that deal with rural life. Can we now say, "Wars Gores Bore More?"
GREEN ZONE
Universal Pictures
Reviewed for Arizona Reporter by Harvey Karten
Grade: B-
Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Written By: Brian Helgeland, book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Cast: Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Yigal Naor, Said Faraj, Khalid Abdalla
Screened at: Lincoln Square, NYC, 3/3/10
Opens: March 12, 2010
This brings us to "Green Zone." Since Matt Damon is presumably a stronger draw than Jeremy Renner in "The Hurt Locker," this Universal release should expect a sizable audience. One might wonder whether the film’s particular criticism of the Iraq War, an indictment that shows up in Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book and scripted for the screen by Brian Helgeland, will be fully understood by a sizable number of the audience, i.e. those who buy their tickets because word-of-mouth will stress the bold action scenes rather than its accusations against the Bush administration. In fact Chandrasekaran, who was Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, a man who spent more time in U.S.-occupied Iraq than any other American journalist, accuses the Bush administration of selecting an occupational administration in Iraq primarily for its loyalty to the president. To the author, U.S. forces in the Green Zone, a spot in central Baghdad that finds Americans doing R ‘n’ R in a resort hotel atmosphere, are as clueless about the goings-on in the real world as are the titular American embassy personnel in Lederer and Burdick’s novel, "The Ugly American." Chandrasekaran blows the lid off, citing that pork is regularly served in the Green Zone despite its staffing by Muslims.
In the movie by Paul Greengrass, the longhaired, British-born director whose "The Bourne Ultimatum" and "The Bourne Supremacy" virtually guaranteed his hiring for a Matt-Damon-centered work, the director ignores such actual activities as the adoption of stray cats by Americans and the casual sex that goes on in abandoned offices. There’s not even a shred of romance in this serious film.
"Green Zone" would have been a better film had it impressed us with these and other personal touches found in the book, but Greengrass is more interested in maximizing a potential audience with action, and for whatever else you can say about the movie, it has Action, capital "A." The commonly expressed view by the performers, "What the F is going on!" might well describe the activities on the screen, which finds Barry Ackroyd’s terminally shaky hand-held camera on the lookout for mayhem on location in Spain, Morocco and the UK standing in for Baghdad and environs.
Yes, "Green Zone" excels at scenes of conflict, involving the usual toys like AK-47’s, helicopters, bazookas, pistols and other accoutrements possessed by Americans and Iraqis in great numbers. Nor does it hurt that Matt Damon anchors the tale as Roy Miller, called "chief" by the unit under his command. Miller is chief warrant officer, a special category that places him higher than the most-senior enlisted soldiers but lower than commissioned officers. Warrant officers are assigned jobs because of their specialty training: Roy Miller’s group specializes in finding WMD’s, the Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam Hussein allegedly had hidden and which were used to gas Kurdish opponents. Little did the American press or national government realize that these WMD’s were completely demolished after Iraq’s loss in the 1991 war against the U.S. Matt Damon plays the American who is incensed that the war is being fought for no sensible reason, calculating after losing some of his men that the real reason for the war was to get rid of Saddam Hussein-not the kind of project worth losing so many American lives. His villainous opponent, Clark Poundstone, played by Greg Kinnear, is the administration’s tool whose job is to advance the war and quash the kind of dissension embraced by the chief warrant officer.
Others in the cast who do fine work include Brendan Gleeson as Martin Brown, a high-level CIA operative who comes around to Roy Miller’s way of thinking; Amy Ryan as Wall Street Journal columnist Lawrie Dayne, who had previously written copy in support of the war based on lying sources she will not reveal; and Khalid Abdalla as "Freddy," an Iraqi who helps the Americans as a translator not for money, but because, he says, he wants the best for his country. Yigal Naor serves as Iraqi General Al Rawi, the man being sought by Roy Miller as the one person who might bring stability to Iraq.
In short, this is a movie more for folks who want well-photographed, virtually non-stop action at the expense of explorations about the morality of war.
GREEN ZONE (Universal Pictures)
Rated R. 115 minutes. © 2010 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
