One of the few Iraq features to focus on the actual reasons for the war re-teams Matt Damon with his Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum director, Paul Greengrass. Written by L.A. Confidential’s Brian Helgeland, it’s a smart, (literally) dark action thriller, tied in to the ultimately futile search for WMDs in 2003.
As with The Hurt Locker (or the Bourne movies, for that matter)‚ Greengrass uses handheld cameras for authenticity. Helgeland’s script takes in actual events now widely assumed to be major blunders, like the dismantling of the Iraqi army, or the failed attempt to install Ahmed Chalabi as leader, and shows how they played among the Sunnis Arabs who formed much of the opposition. The Chalabi character is called something else, and Amy Ryan’s reporter character is only a fictional representative of the real ones who failed to question what turned out to be bad intelligence about WMDs. Of course, you won’t have needed to read the book that “inspired” the film, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City, to figure out that Damon’s character, too, is a composite, that there was no single hero who uncovered all the bad intelligence that provided the casus belli that largely sold the public on the war.
For me, watching this was to experience again the frustration of watching foolish arrogance produce unnecessary destruction. Green Zone is no exposé, though, just an action thriller with a novel backdrop. It does have other virtues, like having a few distinct Iraqi characters, and not emphasizing a high body count. But it’s only a movie, and even Matt Damon wouldn’t have been able stop all of the people for whom self-reflection represents weakness.
IMDB link
viewed 3/9/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/12–18/10
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