Green Zone (Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear) : Movie Review
March 10, 2010 by Jess Lomas
Filed under Featured, Movie Reviews, Movies
In Green Zone the year is 2003 and Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) and his unit are stationed in Iraq in search of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. As each location yields no weapons Miller begins to grow suspicious of the intelligence provided to the United States and questions who the source ‘Magellan’ really is.
Meanwhile Defence Intelligence agent Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) is there to remind Miller it’s his job to execute the mission and not to raise questions. Miller teams up with Gordon Brown (Brendan Gleeson) the CIA bureau chief who is also out for the truth. Finally, foreign correspondent Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) is reporting from the Green Zone, the common name for the International zone in central Baghdad, and was the reporter to gain access and break the story about the source Magellan through a connection with Poundstone.
Thanks to a tip off from an Iraqi citizen, Freddy, Miller discovers the location of a meeting where he spots General Al Rawi the “Jack of Clubs”. Al Rawi escapes but a few of his men do not, and soon a notebook is recovered which points to the location of Baathist safe houses in Baghdad. What follows is Miller’s journey to find General Al Rawi and uncover the truth about the manufactured US intelligence.
Matt Damon in Green Zone
WHAT’S THE BUZZ
It’s the film that many are calling Bourne 4 as director Paul Greengrass and actor Matt Damon reunite. Time for an embarrassing confession, I have not seen the Bourne trilogy, there I said it – please don’t hold it against me! Because of this imperfection in my film viewing I can’t comment on the similarities between Damon and Greengrass’s previous collaboration and Green Zone.
What I can confirm is that Greengrass again uses his trademark hand held camera style that is sure to send a few people running for the nearest bucket. If you thought the shaky cam in The Hurt Locker was bad, you haven’t seen anything yet!
As a positive this throws you right into the action, as a negative at one point in the film the camera was moving around so much I really had no idea what was going on. Overall it’s effective to heighten the tension and action, as Greengrass accomplished in United 93, and if you can stomach it this film is well worth watching.
The performances are all solid, though none outstanding; it really is the action that drives this film. Based on real events and the 2006 novel Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran the end result is already known yet doesn’t detract from the overall suspense or enjoyment. There are a few splashes of humour, mostly courtesy of Freddy and his prosthetic leg but generally this is a ‘don’t forget to breathe’ action thriller.
Some of the messages appear too black and white, this guy is bad and this guy is good, but there’s a lovely insertion of George Bush news footage that garnered a chuckle or two and served as a reminder that this really happened. Freddy is thrown in as the voice of the Iraqi people and thus gets his own speech about what the people want and that it’s not for the Americans to decide what happens in their country. It’s a little heavy handed but thankfully doesn’t saturate the tone of the film.
As a political film it really didn’t work for me, I can’t take Greg Kinnear seriously for one thing – what with his last performance with Damon in Stuck on You – but to watch and enjoy this as an action film I found it thoroughly enjoyable.
WATCH OUT FOR
Lots of shooting… okay that’s a given. There is one amazing helicopter crash scene during the film’s climax which proves that Green Zone’s unrelenting action is the reason to see this film. Kick back and enjoy!
WATCH OUT FOR | RATING : 3.5 / 5
