Green Zone (Review)

The latest from Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon of Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum fame is the latest attempt to make an Iraq war movie that makes more than two dollars at the box office. Not even “The Hurt Locker” could succeed on this front, despite the fact it will probably do quite well on the DVD market. (Winning Best Picture can do that to you.) However, as I write this it appears “Green Zone” made no more than $5 million on Friday, which means it doesn’t appear to be on track to earn its $100 million budget back.

But we’re not here to talk dollars and cents, are we? Let’s talk quality. “Green Zone” is directed by Paul Greengrass, who can seemingly do no wrong with his shaky camera shenanigans. “United 93” was one of my favorite movies of the past decade. It truly felt like a documentary. It was a movie that didn’t know what we knew on September 12, 2001. It is entirely in the moment, capturing the fear and confusion of that terrible day.

That contrasts one of my problems with “Green Zone”, which is that it knows what happened on September 12. Paul Greengrass movies have often been free of bias and politics. This film clearly takes a side, and this opinion is beaten in to our heads for two hours. Essentially Chief Roy Miller is running around Iraq looking for WMDs back at the beginning of the Iraqi War. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t find any.) He then goes on a vendetta to find out why he isn’t getting any results, getting a little too curious for those higher on the totem pole. This leads to various exchanges such as this:

ANYONE ELSE: We have to follow orders!
CHIEF MILLER: I’m done following orders! (tagline alert)

Clearly, the dialogue is not this film’s strength. But really, is that why we go to “Green Zone”? No. We want to be excited, and in that department this film succeeds emphatically. The first several minutes, when Miller and his team are raiding an alleged WMD site, are terrific. Whenever the film has no other objective than to thrill, it doesn’t get much better. And that is what Greengrass does best. “The Bourne Ultimatum” is great, “United 93” is even greater. This film is a step back simply because this film doesn’t focus on the thriller elements all the time, and attempts to preach to a choir which already knows it was duped. I don’t disagree with its stance necessarily, but we get tired after a while.

The final sequences are terrific as well, which easily elevated this to 3 stars instead of 2.5. Again, at these points the film decides to just try and excite us. This is probably a rare movie that I wish was less talky despite the fact it isn’t too talky to begin with. Off of that, this film is another case when there is a point when you’re watching it and you think “Aaaaaaaand… CUT TO BLACK!” It doesn’t. It goes on for a few minutes longer. And they talk a little more. Yawn.
The screenplay was penned by Brian Helgeland, who in the past has given us films such as “Mystic River”. He also gave us “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant”. This is somewhere in between, however he just didn’t seem to put much effort in to this besides reading the newspaper and saying “Golly, this Iraq thing sure is a mess!”

By the way, one of the best performances in this movie is turned in by Khalid Abdalla, who plays an Iraqi citizen who opts to help the American forces. Abdalla also played a slightly conflicted 9/11 hijacker in “United 93”. This role is slightly more sympathetic.

Rating: (out of 4)