Green Zone

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.