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Greengrass’ The Green Zone is a good blend of the cerebral and staccato action, writes Ervell E. Menezes
As Army chief warrant officer Roy Miller, Matt Damon has his hands full with the different factions he has to probe for the truth. There’s the CIA and, the army spokesman and some local informers he has to encounter, but being a man who truly cares for the justification of his actions stops at nothing to get to his goal. But isn’t the whole war fought on a lie? Just an excuse to get back at Saddam Hussain. Gen Al Rawi (Yigal Naor) is the key man who knows the truth. So with colleagues Perry (Nicoye Banks) and Wilkins (Jerry Della Salla), he works his way. Soon he meets journalist Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) whose recent story has a clue. But how credible is it? He probes the source and in doing so the viewer gets a good insight into the modus operandi of how journalists get their stories. The Green Zone is a good blend of the cerebral (thinking man’s film) and staccato action with dizzy camera angles, breathless chases and the fast cut. But in all this is a key line by an Iraqi at the climax: It is not for you to decide what is good for our country. And this exposes the US expansionist tactics in West Asia and elsewhere over the decades. It is better than The Hurt Locker, which tends to glorify the role of the American soldier in Iraq. Here Miller is like the proverbial blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there. Matt Damon is excellent in the lead role and is fast becoming to Paul Greengrass what Robert De Niro was to Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver. Yigal Nasor as the Iraqi general provides a good cameo but otherwise there is not much by way of acting. Grey Kinear is wasted in a bit cameo. Director Greengrass’ priority is the well-constructed action sequences and a very credible war atmosphere with palpable undertones of ethnic divides between the Shias, Sunis and Kurds. The Green Zone is a must-see for anyone wanting to have a clear vision of what’s happening worldwide. It is both enlightening and thought-provoking.
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LIKE
The Hurt Locker,
we now have The Green Zone, another film set in Iraq during the
American war to find those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. The
green zone is said to be the location of those weapons. This script is
based on the book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside
Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrashekaran, apparently an
Indian, and director Paul Greengrass endows it with the Costa-Gavras
docu-drama treatment to make it a thriller in the best traditions of
his earlier Bourne films.