A coincidental convergence of cultural events this week brings the Iraq war back in the news. On Sunday night, a small drama about the harrowing experiences of Army bomb specialists there dominated the Academy Awards. On Tuesday, Bush administration adviser Karl Rove released his memoir, containing a strong defense of the arguments behind declaring that war.
If you go
‘Green Zone’
3 out of 5 Stars
Stars: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Paul Greengrass
Rated R for violence and language
Running time: 115 minutes
Today comes “Green Zone,” which conjectures a conspiracy theory about why weapons of mass destruction — a raison d’etre for the real Iraq war — weren’t found. It leverages that issue with authentic production design and edgy camera work to make a commercial action thriller more provocative. The filmmakers have their, um, yellow cake uranium and eat it too, so to speak. They raise a still-sensitive controversy, but go easy by making it an adrenaline-pumping adventure in shock and awe. No surprise the well-crafted Matt Damon vehicle reunites this intelligent man’s action hero with director Paul Greengrass. Together they made the similarly sophisticated genre hits “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum.” Greengrass also made the brilliantly gripping, yet respectful Sept. 11 docudrama “United 93.”
Here, he mounts screenwriter Brian Helgeland’s fictionalized version of the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad in 2003. The script was reportedly inspired by the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by The Washington Post’s Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
At least one character is recognizable as a real person: Alluding to former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Amy Ryan plays a Wall Street Journal reporter fed what turns out to be questionable intelligence. Her character used it, without verification, for her stories about WMDs, which sold the war.
In this fantasy construct, Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) is a squad leader trying to locate the WMDs who goes rogue to find out why he can’t. Though this hardly seems plausible, a loyal soldier becomes a disobedient crusader — with the help of a CIA good guy (Brendan Gleeson) — to get to the truth. As the insurgency threatens and Baghdad gets increasingly dangerous, Roy will literally have to fight his way out when evidence leads toward a slimy senior U.S. government official (Greg Kinnear) and Saddam Hussein’s key military general.
Representing the average Iraqi citizenry, Roy’s translator Freddy (scene-stealer Khalid Abdalla) becomes the conscience of a movie that doesn’t apologize for being a politically one-sided view of events. But whatever your persuasion, its fabulously realized firefights, chase scenes and explosions are in the “Zone.”
