Director Paul Greengrass puts the dizzying mess of the arrogance and lies of war completely in focus with “Green Zone.” He shakes and bobs his camera from melees in Iraqi neighborhoods to poolside parties in the international territory in Baghdad known as the Green Zone. It’s a cluttered state of affairs told in a tightly composed film. So tightly, in fact, that the story’s characters had to wiggle their way into the film.
Iraq war movies are always a tough sell. Even Oscar-winner The Hurt Locker did poorly at the box office, earning it the title of lowest grossing best picture winner in recent history. But unlike The Hurt Locker, which was about the people in war, Green Zone is about the situations surrounding the Weapons of Mass Destruction. And while the story makes for a fantastic action-thriller, it’s hard to get emotionally invested in just a situation, no matter how recent in history it was.
The film takes place at the start of the Iraq war and Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is fed up with a hunt for WMDs that puts his men in danger but turns up nothing. Military officials are quick to dismiss his concerns of faulty intelligence, but a potential ally comes in the form of CIA employee Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) who correctly predicts Miller’s next mission will leave him empty-handed once more. It doesn’t take long for Miller to go rogue and, with the help of Brown, embark on his own pursuit of the truth behind WMDs. Mistrust and conspiracy run wild and Miller is at the center. Unlike the bureaucrats calling shots from the safety of the guarded Green Zone, Miller is on the ground, experiencing the effects of their decisions in the real world.
The screenplay was inspired by the nonfiction book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and the film tries for a near-documentary level of storytelling. Greengrass even employs a documentary style of camerawork, with shaky cameras and mostly hard natural lighting. It seems the filmmaker was more occupied with recounting U.S. officials’ willingness to lie about the presence of WMDs than creating an original story, but when the real-life story is this interesting, narrative originality is less of an issue.
The political intrigue is matched only by the upfront and tense action-sequences. At the able hands of Greengrass, the film’s action involves no clichés or pastiche, just straight-forward and gritty combat. Greengrass directed Damon in the last two Bourne movies and has tackled other political-action films, such as United 93 and Bloody Sunday. With Green Zone, he balances the precise unfolding of a mystery—surprisingly suspenseful for a story that is now well-known—with realistic and chaotic warfare. But this is at the expense of one key point: characters.
The movie’s characters are less people and more points of views being represented by feebly written cardboard cutouts. Damon plays an all-around hero, blindly fighting for justice and what’s right but lacking any real humanity. He’s more the idea of goodness than a good person. The reliably-grumpy Gleeson does his best as a hard-boiled veteran of conflict strategy who has spent far too long in the region, but the way his role was written just seems too manufactured to be believed. The same for Greg Kinnear as the malicious but flat Clark Poundstone. Amy Ryan as Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne, based on real-life reporter Judith Miller, shows the dangers of an irresponsible press and gives a few moments of insight into guilt, but not much more.
The most intriguing player in the film is an Iraqi citizen nicknamed Freddie, played expertly by British-Egyptian actor Khalid Abdalla (The Kite Runner, United 93). Freddie’s torment and his genuine love for his country are far more compelling than Miller’s all-around good guy image. Green Zone would have been better served to be told through Freddie’s eyes instead; at the very least it would boast a unique and under-represented vantage point.
It is unfortunate Greengrass let this crucial bit of storytelling fly past him undetected. That withstanding, he was a director on a mission and this risky roman à clef of a shameful lie provokes and enrages, as it very well should.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Alice in Wonderland
Alice is back in Wonderland, but its inhabitants aren’t sure she is the right Alice. She looks the same but doesn’t act at all like what they remember their Alice to be. As the Mad Hatter proclaims, old Alice was “much more muchier.” The same can be said for Time Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Past incarnations of the fabled Lewis Carroll story and Burton’s previous work are definitely “muchier.” The film has a hard time finding its own identity, though it’s not without redeeming qualities.
The 1951 Disney animated “Alice in Wonderland” that most people are familiar with was a simple story of a girl’s jaunt through Wonderland as she looks for a way home. This revamped Alice is dealing with things far heavier and the new look of Underland (Alice got the name wrong as a youngster) is fittingly murky and gothic.
Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is 19 years old, on the cusp of a new decade in her life and faced with a marriage proposal to an upper class twit of the year. She's been having dreams of blue caterpillars and talking animals that her late father reassured her made her crazy, "though all the best people are." Not quite ready to let go of her childhood dreams of impossibilities, Alice falls back down the rabbit hole. Underland has been waiting for her return as Alice is destined to slay the Jabborwocky, the henchman of the villainous Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), to return the White Queen to power.
Alice is a whimsical young woman who rejects early marriage and winds up in Joan of Arc-like armor wielding a sword against the feared Jabborwocky. She’s a warrior-heroine who is not relegated to a sex-symbol, doesn’t chase after a man’s affection and is more likely to wear a corset and stockings (fat chance) than be a damsel in distress. In addition to this refreshingly strong-minded female lead, Underland’s problems are set in motion by powerful feuding sisters not fighting over a man but for their own self-worth or humanistic beliefs. As it is so rare in Hollywood to find more than one interesting female role per film, “Alice” deserves praise for this alone. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t come together as impressively.
Burton’s speckles his film with moments of his trademark quirky flavor, such as when a fat pig comes squealing to the Red Queen’s throne to be her foot rest, but overall, his style got lost in an over-burdened story, forced wackiness and pointless 3D effects. The promise of revolutionary 3D that followed Avatar is not at all realized in “Alice,” where the 3D is unsurprisingly cumbersome and labored as Burton shot the film for 2D.
The story relies on the fact that audiences are familiar with the characters so it doesn’t bother to establish them, but then takes them into entirely new territories. The Cheshire Cat, Blue Caterpillar and White Rabbit are all there but can’t decide if they are recreations or reinterpretations. Maybe the film asked directions from Tweedledee and Tweedledum, because the story goes in every which way, but nowhere at all.
The Mad Hatter and the Red Queen, handled expertly by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter respectively, stand above the rest. Depp's jitteriness and frighteningly glazed expression has hints of the animated Hatter but is a unique creation of Burton’s interpretation and a great example of how to make the old come alive. The only complaint would be that the Mad Hatter was forced into being a bigger role than needed. Layered in make-up and a clown wig, Depp makes you long for the “Ed Wood” and “Edward Scissorhands” days when his collaboration with Burton felt so effortless.
Bonham Carter's cold portrayal of the Red Queen with a head almost as large as her delusions of dignity brings an unexpected depth to an over-the-top villain. Credit must also be given for Anne Hathaway’s kooky turn as the docile yet off-beat White Queen. Though not as present as her evil sister, the White Queen feels like a true Burton inspiration.
If only the rest of the film followed the pattern of these three characters in taking familiarity and subverting it. Instead, “Alice in Wonderland” is an underwhelming display of Burton’s old “muchness.”
The 1951 Disney animated “Alice in Wonderland” that most people are familiar with was a simple story of a girl’s jaunt through Wonderland as she looks for a way home. This revamped Alice is dealing with things far heavier and the new look of Underland (Alice got the name wrong as a youngster) is fittingly murky and gothic.
Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is 19 years old, on the cusp of a new decade in her life and faced with a marriage proposal to an upper class twit of the year. She's been having dreams of blue caterpillars and talking animals that her late father reassured her made her crazy, "though all the best people are." Not quite ready to let go of her childhood dreams of impossibilities, Alice falls back down the rabbit hole. Underland has been waiting for her return as Alice is destined to slay the Jabborwocky, the henchman of the villainous Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), to return the White Queen to power.
Alice is a whimsical young woman who rejects early marriage and winds up in Joan of Arc-like armor wielding a sword against the feared Jabborwocky. She’s a warrior-heroine who is not relegated to a sex-symbol, doesn’t chase after a man’s affection and is more likely to wear a corset and stockings (fat chance) than be a damsel in distress. In addition to this refreshingly strong-minded female lead, Underland’s problems are set in motion by powerful feuding sisters not fighting over a man but for their own self-worth or humanistic beliefs. As it is so rare in Hollywood to find more than one interesting female role per film, “Alice” deserves praise for this alone. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn’t come together as impressively.
Burton’s speckles his film with moments of his trademark quirky flavor, such as when a fat pig comes squealing to the Red Queen’s throne to be her foot rest, but overall, his style got lost in an over-burdened story, forced wackiness and pointless 3D effects. The promise of revolutionary 3D that followed Avatar is not at all realized in “Alice,” where the 3D is unsurprisingly cumbersome and labored as Burton shot the film for 2D.
The story relies on the fact that audiences are familiar with the characters so it doesn’t bother to establish them, but then takes them into entirely new territories. The Cheshire Cat, Blue Caterpillar and White Rabbit are all there but can’t decide if they are recreations or reinterpretations. Maybe the film asked directions from Tweedledee and Tweedledum, because the story goes in every which way, but nowhere at all.
The Mad Hatter and the Red Queen, handled expertly by Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter respectively, stand above the rest. Depp's jitteriness and frighteningly glazed expression has hints of the animated Hatter but is a unique creation of Burton’s interpretation and a great example of how to make the old come alive. The only complaint would be that the Mad Hatter was forced into being a bigger role than needed. Layered in make-up and a clown wig, Depp makes you long for the “Ed Wood” and “Edward Scissorhands” days when his collaboration with Burton felt so effortless.
Bonham Carter's cold portrayal of the Red Queen with a head almost as large as her delusions of dignity brings an unexpected depth to an over-the-top villain. Credit must also be given for Anne Hathaway’s kooky turn as the docile yet off-beat White Queen. Though not as present as her evil sister, the White Queen feels like a true Burton inspiration.
If only the rest of the film followed the pattern of these three characters in taking familiarity and subverting it. Instead, “Alice in Wonderland” is an underwhelming display of Burton’s old “muchness.”
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