Matt Shea
RubySoho
Morgan Bell
Cibbuano
David O'Connell
Mountain Fog
Green Zone
March 10th 2010 06:17
by Matt Shea
There’s an awkward moment late in the running time of Green Zone when a penny drops.
Matt Damon, the man largely responsible for introducing a whole swathe of Gen Y’ers to the novels of Robert Ludlum, is rushing through the war-torn Baghdad backstreets late at night. There’s rocket fire and bullet-riddled old Peugots and flaming helicopters. Noise. Mayhem. Death.
Damon is once again a picture of Ludlum’s most famous creation, running like Jason Bourne, fighting like Jason Bourne, and pursuing his target with the same sort of grim autonomic determination as Jason Bourne.
Only he’s not Jason Bourne. He’s Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, the head of an Army WMD inspection team whose emotional investments are important – his mission, his integrity and the integrity of his country – but not exactly the sort of life-or-death identity crisis suffered by Bourne.
The movie suffers a disconnect from the audience and you’re suddenly stuck in your seat feeling disappointingly de-energised. And it’s a pity, because up until that point Green Zone travels along in some style.
Very loosely based upon Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book of the same name, Green Zone the film takes quite a different tact when compared to its source material.
Chandrasekaran was once Baghdad bureau chief for The Washinton Post, present when American forces attempted to set up a provisional administration on the grounds surrounding former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s palace. The area would soon become known as the Green Zone, and in his book Chandrasekaran painted a picture of a resulting governing body that existed in a bubble so far removed from the grim realities of the Iraq War that it failed to properly assess the needs of the people.
For the film, screenwriter Brian Helgeland has used the book simply as leverage to supply a lean, focussed story of a solider who joins forces with a senior CIA officer in an effort to uncover the truth about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Roy Miller is convinced that the Iraqis have been stockpiling WMDs throughout Baghdad, but as he and his team race from one site to another, day-in, day-out, they continually come up with nothing. Questions about intelligence sources are deflected and soon Miller is beginning to have doubts about his mission.
When experienced CIA man Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) notices Miller’s petulance during a briefing he approaches the warrant officer, asking him to keep an ear to the ground for anything that may enlighten them on the true story behind WMDs.
It’s not long before a coded book of Iraqi meeting locations has found its way into Miller’s hands and both he and Brown realise that they could be on the verge of bringing in the one man who knows the truth about the weapons. But the truth doesn’t sit well with everybody in the local American administration, and soon the two men are coming up against some deadly homegrown opposition.
For the majority of its running time, Green Zone is a lean, tightly packaged actioner. Director Paul Greengrass has had an up-and-down affair with action films in the last five years, nailing it quite convincingly with The Bourne Supremacy before going to work with a dodgy script on that film’s follow-up, The Bourne Ultimatum.
With Green Zone he’s back on form, and he’s brought along his favourite leading man as well. It’s easy to groan at the grainy Green Zone posters, immediately reminiscent of that trilogy, but Damon is really the perfect choice for the role, and convincing enough to sell his new character within the first couple of scenes. Miller is no judo-chop amnesiac, getting by on a pair of sandshoes and an aspirin; he’s simply a well-drilled professional and quiet patriot, one who has a hard time understanding the politics of war.
Of course, the other Greengrass man that David Stratton will be disappointed came along for the ride is Barry Ackroyd, he of the shakiest cam that ever shaked. Ackroyd worked with Greengrass on United 93 and is in the spotlight for his recent work on this film’s intimidating yardstick, The Hurt Locker. There’s no doubt that both Ackroyd and Greengrass enjoy things a little motion sickening, but they also seem to work together very well: Ackroyd’s work remains fluid, natural and documentary-like, but rarely at the expense of the clear geography established by both Greengrass’s direction and Helegand’s script, and braced by Christopher Rouse’s precise editing job.
Adding to the marked sense of realism is the excellent supporting cast. Gleeson is of course brilliant as Brown, Greg Kinnear does his best to obfuscate and confuse as a PR-driven Paul Bremer stand-in, while Jason Isaacs gets to be what he always wanted in Black Hawk Down: a nut-busting special forces operative who quickly becomes Miller’s nemisis. Amy Ryan is the one player who gets short-changed, The Wire alumnus doing her best with a cornered reporter who’s little more than a cursory cut-out.
Green Zone is measured and robust filmmaking, doing just about everything well. Its action scenes are economical and realistic, exposition lean and efficient, subtext firmly in place and its character content never weighty. So, it’s a real shame that all that hard work is blown in the final section, the film’s determination to deliver an explosive pay-off dissolving much of its overall impact. Make no mistake: these late scenes are filmed with much of the skill and brio found throughout the rest of the film – it just doesn’t feel honest, like so much of Green Zone strives to be.
I say: A superior and very classy action film that suffers a bit of a trip over its explosive final hurdle.
See it for: Damon-haters will be glad to see him get licked by Isaacs in an early-film fisticuff.
*This image is from Filmofilia
There’s an awkward moment late in the running time of Green Zone when a penny drops.
Matt Damon, the man largely responsible for introducing a whole swathe of Gen Y’ers to the novels of Robert Ludlum, is rushing through the war-torn Baghdad backstreets late at night. There’s rocket fire and bullet-riddled old Peugots and flaming helicopters. Noise. Mayhem. Death.
Damon is once again a picture of Ludlum’s most famous creation, running like Jason Bourne, fighting like Jason Bourne, and pursuing his target with the same sort of grim autonomic determination as Jason Bourne.
Only he’s not Jason Bourne. He’s Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, the head of an Army WMD inspection team whose emotional investments are important – his mission, his integrity and the integrity of his country – but not exactly the sort of life-or-death identity crisis suffered by Bourne.
The movie suffers a disconnect from the audience and you’re suddenly stuck in your seat feeling disappointingly de-energised. And it’s a pity, because up until that point Green Zone travels along in some style.
Very loosely based upon Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book of the same name, Green Zone the film takes quite a different tact when compared to its source material.
Chandrasekaran was once Baghdad bureau chief for The Washinton Post, present when American forces attempted to set up a provisional administration on the grounds surrounding former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s palace. The area would soon become known as the Green Zone, and in his book Chandrasekaran painted a picture of a resulting governing body that existed in a bubble so far removed from the grim realities of the Iraq War that it failed to properly assess the needs of the people.
For the film, screenwriter Brian Helgeland has used the book simply as leverage to supply a lean, focussed story of a solider who joins forces with a senior CIA officer in an effort to uncover the truth about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Roy Miller is convinced that the Iraqis have been stockpiling WMDs throughout Baghdad, but as he and his team race from one site to another, day-in, day-out, they continually come up with nothing. Questions about intelligence sources are deflected and soon Miller is beginning to have doubts about his mission.
When experienced CIA man Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) notices Miller’s petulance during a briefing he approaches the warrant officer, asking him to keep an ear to the ground for anything that may enlighten them on the true story behind WMDs.
It’s not long before a coded book of Iraqi meeting locations has found its way into Miller’s hands and both he and Brown realise that they could be on the verge of bringing in the one man who knows the truth about the weapons. But the truth doesn’t sit well with everybody in the local American administration, and soon the two men are coming up against some deadly homegrown opposition.
For the majority of its running time, Green Zone is a lean, tightly packaged actioner. Director Paul Greengrass has had an up-and-down affair with action films in the last five years, nailing it quite convincingly with The Bourne Supremacy before going to work with a dodgy script on that film’s follow-up, The Bourne Ultimatum.
With Green Zone he’s back on form, and he’s brought along his favourite leading man as well. It’s easy to groan at the grainy Green Zone posters, immediately reminiscent of that trilogy, but Damon is really the perfect choice for the role, and convincing enough to sell his new character within the first couple of scenes. Miller is no judo-chop amnesiac, getting by on a pair of sandshoes and an aspirin; he’s simply a well-drilled professional and quiet patriot, one who has a hard time understanding the politics of war.
Of course, the other Greengrass man that David Stratton will be disappointed came along for the ride is Barry Ackroyd, he of the shakiest cam that ever shaked. Ackroyd worked with Greengrass on United 93 and is in the spotlight for his recent work on this film’s intimidating yardstick, The Hurt Locker. There’s no doubt that both Ackroyd and Greengrass enjoy things a little motion sickening, but they also seem to work together very well: Ackroyd’s work remains fluid, natural and documentary-like, but rarely at the expense of the clear geography established by both Greengrass’s direction and Helegand’s script, and braced by Christopher Rouse’s precise editing job.
Adding to the marked sense of realism is the excellent supporting cast. Gleeson is of course brilliant as Brown, Greg Kinnear does his best to obfuscate and confuse as a PR-driven Paul Bremer stand-in, while Jason Isaacs gets to be what he always wanted in Black Hawk Down: a nut-busting special forces operative who quickly becomes Miller’s nemisis. Amy Ryan is the one player who gets short-changed, The Wire alumnus doing her best with a cornered reporter who’s little more than a cursory cut-out.
Green Zone is measured and robust filmmaking, doing just about everything well. Its action scenes are economical and realistic, exposition lean and efficient, subtext firmly in place and its character content never weighty. So, it’s a real shame that all that hard work is blown in the final section, the film’s determination to deliver an explosive pay-off dissolving much of its overall impact. Make no mistake: these late scenes are filmed with much of the skill and brio found throughout the rest of the film – it just doesn’t feel honest, like so much of Green Zone strives to be.
I say: A superior and very classy action film that suffers a bit of a trip over its explosive final hurdle.
See it for: Damon-haters will be glad to see him get licked by Isaacs in an early-film fisticuff.
*This image is from Filmofilia
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Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Though I wasn't a huge fan of the Bourne films (Too uneven in pacing and way to self conscious in editing) I think this one looks intriguing.
I didn't read the review for fear of spoilers but when Greengrass is on he is on.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
As for Bourne: It annoys me a little that credit for the series has been pulled away from the makers of the first film - it is by some margin the best of the three.
In any case, check this out - Greengrass and his cohorts definitely dial down the visual craziness.
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Anonymous