Green Zone (Paul Greengrass, 2010)
Matt Damon and his crew are looking for WMDs in the weeks after the start of the Iraq War. Problem is, each "intel-confirmed" site comes up negative, and Damon starts to wonder what on earth is going on. Who is the source for this crap intel? After asking at a command briefing, and getting slapped down and told to just do his job without question, Damon goes off to the next site, and meets an apparently friendly Iraqi with a tip about a meeting of ex-Ba'athists taking place. Just missing the main attraction there, Damon starts to get the idea that things are not quite what he's been told. The thing is, he steps right in the middle of an inter-agency turf war about the future direction of a "free" Iraq.
It was great to be in the recreated chaos of post-liberation Iraq - rubble, looting, gutted buildings, angry crowds - and then be knocked off-balance by the swimming pool scene inside the Green Zone. Being a Greengrass film, the action on its own keeps you off-balance for most of the film, ending with a Bourne-esque pursuit through the streets of nighttime Baghdad. There are also some great little nods to Abu Ghraib and "Mission Accomplished" etc peppered through the film that doesn't drag the narrative momentum down. Greengrass has got that sort of thing down pat.
The engine of the film is the everyman, investigative and never-say-die ethos of Matt Damon's character. All it takes is one man, dammit, one man seeking the truth without compromise, and maybe we can make things right. This could almost be seen as the liberal version of a
Rambo tale, but without the psychosis and huge pecs. But I digress. Damon is certainly no Stallone (read it whichever way you want), but more of a fully-functioning grunt trying to tread the right path, bypassing political spin to get to the truth. Problem is, he's the only fully-drawn character, with the rest, by necessity, inhabiting only shells of their "type".
This is the core problem with the film. There's none of that intense character-study, lone-wolf vibe that the Bourne films give off. Bourne is out and about, inhabiting the everyday world, but a sort of parallel everyday world filled with assassins and secret entities wishing him ill. In this film, Damon's character is in a war-zone, is part of a team, and the dangers are nowhere near as hidden or abstract. It just sort of dissipates the tension. There are no covert ops, just overt ops. This is a full-on war, dammit!
Pyrotechnics and smash-bang editing aside, this is an astute and cheeky film, effectively offering an alterno-history of the WMD debacle, producing a hefty middle-finger to the crooks and liars of the Bush administration, and giving the lapdog, lickspittle media that allowed it to happen one more chance to get their bloody reporting right.