Green Zone (R), 2009

The US film industry has become the public confessional of the US military; on the outside, this mighty, military, machine marches inexorably on from continent to continent; on the inside, all is fear, anxiety and doubt. Green Zone is the latest in a line of public catharsis’s ranging from Rambo to Black Hawk Down.
The film is set in and around the “Green Zone” , the colloquial name for the International Zone, a 12 square kilometre area of land in central Baghdad which housed the Coalition Partners during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Matt Damon plays Roy Miller, a US Army Officer who leads a team of soldiers charged with finding weapons of mass destruction during the 2003 invasion of Iraq but who begins to question the intelligence sources after successive searches prove worthless. Damon expresses his misgivings to Martin Brown (played by Brendan Gleeson), a hard-bitten, CIA intelligence Director, who, fortuitously, happens to share Damon’s suspicions. During a routine patrol, Damon’s unit happens across a “source” who, equally fortuitously, leads them to Al Rawi, a high- ranking, Iraqi general, played by Igal Naor, formerly of Saddam’s Imperial Guard. Brown convinces Damon that Al Rawi’s presence in any future Iraqi government is critical if civil war is to be avoided.

The rest of the movie is spent trying to locate - some of the technical gadgetry is marvellous - the exact whereabouts of Al-Rawi – despite the rather close (and violent) attentions of Clark Poundstone ,( Greg Kinnear, maturing with age, is perfectly cast), the local Head of Pentagon Special Intelligence, but who wants nothing to do with Al Rawi.

The sense of place is beautifully portrayed- particularly the damaged Iraqi civil and military infrastructure and, even more powerfully, the complete disruption of normal life - from a complete lack of basic facilities to total chaos on the roads. In one particular scene, a lynching is only just avoided as Damon’s small convoy of vehicles is brought to a halt by a snarling, resentful mass of locals, desperate to find water for their families.

But overall, the film disappoints from a number of perspectives. It fails to explore the political complexities- Al Rawi is the only political leader we meet and even then his intentions are not fully explained. The military perspective is primitive and one dimensional; Damon goes rogue, working directly for Brown but is left entirely unpunished and Poundstone seems to have the full use of a death squad at his personal command.

But above all, the characters themselves simply fail to convince. Hindered by a lack of muscular dialogue and undermined by overly long scenes of hand held camerawork, almost to the point of nausea , the characters are without depth from the over-stereotypical Poundstone and Brown, to Lawrie Dayne (a brief cameo from Amy Ryan), an experienced Wall St Journal reporter, who, apparently, fails to check sources. Damon himself does his best with limited material but, like a good wine he has matured and is ready for and worthy of, more. Daniel Craig must surely be in his sights.


Verdict

Overall then, the Green Zone, based on a non fictional account of life in Bagdad written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, and adapted for screen in 2007 by Director, Paul Greengrass, disappoints, surprisingly perhaps since the Greengrass / Bourne combination gave us the Bourne Ultimatum.
The American obsession with detailed post mortems on military interventions rolls on; 1978 gave us the “The Deer Hunter” ; 1979 Apocalypse Now “and 1998, “Saving Private Ryan”. Green Zone however, is not destined for such illustrious company.
Did not live up to expectations. 3/10


Dick Morgan
March 20 2010