Director: Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum)
Book: Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Screenplay: Brian Helgeland
Producers: Lloyd Levin, Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan
Starring: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Khalid Abdalla, Jason Isaacs
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 115 min.
(2.5/5)what was intentionally or unintentionally marketed as the fourth picture in the Jason Bourne franchise is really anything but. I suppose that teaming Damon with Bourne director Paul Greengrass in any sort of action picture will automatically conjure memories of Jason Bourne. Despite what we see in the trailer for Green Zone, in which Damon is a slick talking, martial arts wielding expert of everything that is able to get out of any situation, here Damon’s character is really just another well trained army officer like any other. However, as the film wears on the character is slowly elevated (or lowered) into a version of Rambo.
Miller (Damon) is the chief officer of a squad of WMD seekers in the months after the initial invasion of Iraq. After coming up empty on several scouts, Miller begins to question where the intel is coming from and why it is wrong every time. The brass ignore his complaints and tell him to just follow orders. Martin Brown (Gleeson) is the head of CIA in country who contacts Miller and together the two of them try to discover where the source of this bad intel is coming from. In the meantime, Miller is required to continue his search for WMD but through a tip from a local Iraqi citizen, gets caught up in a hunt down of one of Saddam’s top generals (who may or may not have anything to do with the American intel program). As details are revealed and frustration mounts, Miller begins to question more and more why the U.S. invaded in the first place.
What starts in tone as Black Hawk Down, evolves into a less goofy version of Three Kings as Miller goes off mission to pursue his own answers to question before finally settling on Rambo III for the closing 25 minutes or so. The action sequences and military procedures for the first half of Green Zone are energetic, spectacular and captivating. The dynamic between Miller and his subordinates and those of the higher-ups is compelling and the idea of a military conspiracy is played out well enough to keep us interested.
What may throw some viewers off from the get-go is Greengrass’ signature style of trying to make you feel like you’re in the action. Greengrass is notorious for being one of the only directors working today who properly uses shaky cam to give the right effect, but still keep the audience in the here and now without giving us too much of a headache. With Green Zone however, while he mostly succeeds in that endeavor, there are points where it’s nearly unbearable. It teeters on the brink of laziness, miscommunication and poor planning in several sequences. I can imagine a lot of complaints coming from some of the less hearty of film goers.
Damon plays the serious, disciplined character well. He’s believable in the role of a c/o with a touch of rogue within him. He doesn’t want to go off mission, but his moral priorities force him to go in directions he might otherwise never have. Pressuring him on both sides of his ethical conundrum are Gleeson and Kinnear using Damon as a pawn as the two of them spar off with their political allegiances and agendas. These two are by far the stand-outs in the film as they are really the two pseudo-antagonists playing tug-o-war with Miller’s strings; prompting him to ask, “I thought we were all supposed to be on the same side?” Don’t be naive Matt.
As top reporter from The Wall Street Journal, Amy Ryan is completely wasted (yet again) as the character who asks the obvious questions of Kinnear so that the audience doesn’t have to think too much. She’s merely used as a weak and lazy plot device to spoon feed Damon’s character with vague information so that he can get on to the next bit of shoot ‘em up rather than a clever use of narrative or visual clues to further the story. After being nominated for an Oscar after Gone Baby Gone, I think it’s about time we ask the question, what’s going on with Amy Ryan? Where is she and why is she railroaded into these bland, uninteresting side characters that are of little consequence? To be honest it’s becoming a little frustrating.
Despite the Rambo-esque nature the film turns into towards the end, the action and general aesthetic of the war front is enough to keep the audience interested for the most part. The problem comes with the incredibly dumbed down and obviousness of the message of the movie. Had this story been put to screen in 2005 or ’06, there might be something a little bit more compelling and even controversial to some and probably worthy of some political question asking. But now, over four years after the admission by the government that there were no WMD in Iraq, it sort of makes the whole story irrelevant at this point and almost boring. “What was the point of us going to war in the first place?” screams Damon, “The reasons matter!” Well, thanks screenwriter for giving us these captivating questions and lessons of this war that have never been brought to the attention of the American people before.
These lessons actually start off rather well in which I was completely on board with the “show me, don’t tell me” attitude of film making. Being in the shoes of the soldiers on the ground as they come up empty handed time and time again was really rather intriguing and a unique perspective at the entire situation. As soon as it became a dialogue spoonful of obviousness, I began to get bored – especially with the action growing tiresomely cliché for the final half of an hour. Which again, would’ve been tolerable, but coupled with the laziness of the message delivery I couldn’t help but glance at my watch and then roll my eyes when I discovered how much time was left.
Skip it? No, it’s worth a weekend popcorn getaway. Just prepare to have your intelligence insulted slightly. Which is extra stinging of course coming from Greengrass who has shown masterpiece level film making with the likes of Bloody Sunday, United 93 and to some extent, even The Bourne Ultimatum. War movie fans will rejoice and the performances are on par, it just doens’t have much more to offer us than that.
I concur with most of this. The one thing that makes the Bourne movies so good as a cultural barometer (for distrust of government agencies) is that they are complete fiction. Greengrass and Brian Helgeland (!grrrrrr!…laziest A-list writer this side of Akiva Goldsman) playing things as a loose history lesson kinda takes the punch out of things. It flatens out Damons competent solider character and makes him simply BORING. I agree that Kinnear and Gleeson (who has really trouble with his accent to the point of distraction) are the stand-outs here and I wish the movie was between them with Damon as a minor character. Less action, more brains please!
Yes the cinemtography and camerawork are state-of-the-art (no issue with Shakey Camera here.) and yes the film looks like a Million $$$ (love the pre-credits sequence! Awesome!) but the movie just felt on autopilot, yet its serious and urgent tone implies that the filmmakers thought they were onto something profound. I wish Damon/Greengrass (and a much superior writer than Helgaland….TONY GILROY) spent $100M on Bourne 4 set in Baghdad instead of this Greenzone business…
(Watch the Fabulous GENERATION KILL instead of GreenZone, the focus is different, but its a far more interesting picture of soldiers on the ground in 2003 Iraq. Greenzone’s degeneration into what can only be called “HOLLYWOOD BULLSHIT – and I’m talking from the outset of the “Freddie character who is as phony of a screenwriting device as Andrew calls Amy Ryan’s Character.)
(Second, final though: Was Jason Isaacs looking BADASS or what? If they ever decide to Remake COMMANDO, I nominate Isaacs as the villain!)
Oscar Mike!
And United 93 is more a telling of the filmmaker fucking with his audience rather than necessarily going for a great story. If you didn’t know what happened from the outset of United 93, it’d be a far less good film. The fact that the fore-knowledge is built right into the DNA of the picture is what I find interesting with U93.
“If you didn’t know what happened from the outset of United 93, it’d be a far less good film.”
Huh? Based on what?
I agree that Brian Helgeland hasn’t really written any good movies, but I don’t agree that the Bourne movies are any good. They are boring as hell, and the amount of cuts in them make all the action sequences feel as fake to me as the action sequences in Transformers.
“If you didn’t know what happened from the outset of United 93, it’d be a far less good film.”
My own personal reaction is that there are two interesting things about United 93. 1) seeing the mundane actions that airbourne commuters/business-folk/travelers do every day with the loaded information that the plane is going down. There is too much damn detail in the filming on the actual flight for the filmmakers not to be aware that audience awareness is going to make those scenes work. 2) The ‘what if I were in that situation’ factor plays a part, both on the ground with the air-traffik controllers and in the air with the passengers (emphasis again on the latter).
Otherwise, U93 is a glorified ‘recreation’ on the A&E Channel.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the film is very good at what it does, but I again, I postulate that it is the meta-aspect that made the film riveting for me.
Yeah, forgot about Isaacs. He was gnarly as hell. While viewing, I actually thought it was the cop from Surveillance who had put on a few muscley pounds..
Amy Ryan was really good in her recurring role on The Office last year – showed a comedic side that I didn’t expect (I’d only seen her in Gone Baby Gone before, I think).
“Otherwise, U93 is a glorified ‘recreation’ on the A&E Channel. ”
I think it’s an un-glorified recreation, and that’s why it works so well. Great movie, stop trying to pretend you’ve got it figured out, it belittles it!
I am not pretending anything (although I am flattered that you think my word is gospel, Henrik) – my comments above are simply my thoughts on why or why not United 93 works as well as it does. Take it as you will.