GREEN ZONE review: no country for good men

GREEN ZONE review: no country for good men

Mar 29

The War in Iraq, since its inception seven years ago, has become the butt of a dozen jokes, to the point that you don’t even have to make a joke about it any more; merely mentioning the War in Iraq is a punchline in itself, reminding listeners that America dropped the ball bigtime, and the rest of the world isn’t happy with it. While the War on Islam (euphemised “terror”) in Afghanistan is somewhat more justified, the Iraq War has always been confusing and stupid, right from the start. They went in looking for WMDs (I think it’s pronounced ‘womdas’), but pretty soon the public was aware that there were, in fact, no WMDs, and there never were. Whatever the US’ reasons were for invading the troubled country, they didn’t involve WMDs at all, and anyone who’s had access to a television, newspaper or internet connection in the past decade knows this; it’s general knowledge by now, as is the knowledge that the War (like any) should be seen as an almost criminal waste of time, money and life, and that people like Bush and Cheney should be held accountable for their actions.

So why does this Matt Damon / Paul Greengrass movie seek to bash this common knowledge over my head like I’m some kind of moron? This movie could only have been made for one demographic — the brainwashed right-wing conservative American folk who watch Fox News and rail against the rights of women and the gay community – who are too ignorant or misinformed to have known about all this right from the start. However, Green Zone fails not only to be informative, but it fails entirely to be entertaining.

Green Zone focuses on the events immediately following the US’ invasion of Iraq, during which the search for womdas produced no results. Matt Damon plays Chief Miller, whose squad takes site after womda site, only to find them completely devoid of WMD. This frustrates Miller, but we have no idea why. He rails against his superiors, but we have no idea why, and then makes friends with a CIA agent who might be able to help him find out why there are no WMD, but we have no idea why. There is also a reporter involved, but we have no idea why. And Greg Kinnear. By this stage we’ve stopped asking why. Someone fed the military false intelligence reports, someone whose codename is “Magellan.” The script introduces so few characters that Magellan can only be one of about three people, so the half-arsed “reveal” towards the end is completely devoid of impact. In the meantime Matt Damon scampers all over Baghdad making friends with locals and making enemies of the folks he’s supposed to be working for in an attempt to uncover the conspiracy of who Magellan really is and where the WMD really are (SPOILER: there are none).

If you could measure “character” quantitatively, Green Zone‘s would amount to precisely zero. We know nothing about Miller — does he have a family? Has he always been a soldier, or was he born without a gun in his hand and a scowl on his face? Does he go to church? Does he believe in freedom? Does he understand that “freedom” means being allowed to go about your own business without a foreign military force invading your country and enforcing democracy with the barrel of a gun? Sometimes I think the irony of enforced democracy seems lost on Americans. We know nothing about Miller, and his dialogue doesn’t help to shed light on his motivations or characteristics. All the other characters are the same — gruff, tough-guy, macho shells that spout increasingly hostile lines that convey nothing but their need to posture and appear manly. Even the only female character (a reporter, because what else are women good for in a war?) in the movie is macho beyond belief. Nobody says “Hello” or “How are the kids?”, they always initiate conversations with “Whaddaya got?” or “What?” or “You ready to talk yet?” Halfway through the movie I felt stifled by all this macho lack of character, and needless to say, it really hurts the film.

What also hurts the film is the cinematography. Allow me to indulge an analogy. Wut if i wrot lyk dis, in txtspk, n u had to red evrthng with splng mstks n grbld grmmr n i ttly made u try put it tgthr n e way? There is an extra split-second of delay as your brain frustratedly processes my bullshit into English, so you can go about reading what I’m trying to say; director Paul Greengrass does exactly this, but with the camera. Those who’ve had the misfortune of seeing the latter two Bourne films will know what I’m talking about: the camera shakes violently, without reason, to give a sense of “realism” or “it’s-like-you’re-really-there-ism,” but it doesn’t work. Watching grainy, underlit footage (one scene was even out of focus!) is kind of like reading reams and reams of illiterate garbage, and actually serves to distance the viewer from what’s going on, because their brain has to run all kinds of stabilising routines on the image just to make sense of it. There are conventions of storytelling that lend a degree of professionalism to your work, to help you get across the genuine meaning of your piece. Breaking these conventions confuses the meaning and places more emphasis on the style of telling than what is actually being told, and I hate it.

The script is similarly woeful. Besides the complete lack of characters, there is a distinct lack of coherence, tension, or even basic fun. There isn’t a single joke, not a single humanising aspect to the proceedings, and not a single action scene that introduces palpable stakes — we all knows what happened after the movie finishes, so anything that happens in the movie can’t be that impactful, can it? Miller ropes in a local bloke nicknamed Freddie, who claims to want to improve his country for the better, but then for some reason agrees to help the invading army — the audience is obliged to accept Miller’s efforts as morally correct, simply because a) he’s the protagonist and b) he’s played by Matt Damon. The whole movie takes place in a deeply grey area of morality, and the script’s failure to address this hamstrings the potential emotional impact of the narrative. This gets even sillier when Miller is written as the only character in the US forces who has a conscience (this doesn’t count as a character trait because it is automatic and never questioned); everyone else, including the general running the show, are heartless and apathetic to truth and justice, so even if Miller is some kind of hero, there’s nothing he can do because he’s technically employed by the bad guys.

Fixing the movie wouldn’t take a lot of work. First, buy a tripod, and use it. Learn to zoom out (and stay zoomed out). Humanise the main characters with photos of loved ones, or with a brief glimpse of the place where they live, complete with momentos and knick-knacks and whatnot that help define them. Develop the antagonism between Damon’s character and that of Jason Isaacs: maybe they are brothers, or maybe they trained together back at boot camp. Making them once-friends would help to deepen the conflict. As it is, there’s one ruthless macho asshole chasing down another ruthless macho asshole, and there’s no reason to root for either one (in fact, Jason Isaacs’ character actually follows the rules and obeys his orders, so technically he’s a better bloke than Damon’s). Vary the characters a bit — they don’t all have to speak in short, sharp macho-speak. Focus more on the absence of WMD — follow Damon’s Miller to a few more sites but ratchet up the action each time (think The Hurt Locker), and finish the film with the Magellan reveal and the personal showdown between Jason Isaacs and Matt Damon. And then … goodness, the list goes on. On second thoughts, fixing the movie would take a lot of work; it’s very close to unsalvageable.

For me Green Zone failed on every level. Technically, artistically and emotionally it brings nothing to the table. We already know what happened in Iraq, telling it to us again wasn’t requested or required. Making another movie with wild camera-work and incongruous crisp dialogue replacement is insulting. Making an action movie without any action is similarly offensive, and populating said movie with cardboard cut-outs of video game characters based on military cliche is breathtakingly stupid. There is literally nothing to recommend about the film, except that it’s not overly lengthy, but that’s not exactly praise in the usual sense of the word.

Green Zone score

08/100