Written by Vickie
March 12, 2010
If you can get past the frenetic, nauseating, hand-held camerawork, you might actually enjoy this high-octane actioner about a rogue soldier trying to expose the truth about America’s mission in Iraq.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get past director Paul Greengrass’s dizzying and often needlessly herky-jerky cinematography – so much so that I had to close my eyes from time to time just to get a break because I was getting very queasy. I’m not a fan of that shooting style and I find that, more often than not, it actually detracts from what’s happening, story-wise. But I digress...
Matt Damon is Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, who’s assigned to find the elusive weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Baghdad in 2003. But one location after another turns up nothing, leading Miller to question – very publicly – the intelligence the military is being fed. His suspicions are shared by a CIA official (Brendan Gleeson) and disputed by the official government spokesman (Greg Kinnear) on the scene, so Miller decides to take matters into his own hands.
Joined by a helpful Iraqi civilian (Khalid Abdalla, who turns in a wonderfully endearing performance), our hero heads out to find proof that there actually aren’t any WMDs anywhere, and that the U.S. government lied about their existence in order to facilitate war.
With nary a steadicam on hand, Greengrass follows Miller from one perilous location to another, never letting any shot linger more than about three seconds. There are plenty of chase sequences, explosions, killings and mayhem to keep everyone’s adrenaline pumping but, beyond the manic action, there isn’t a whole lot of story in which to root the film. It’s about 25 minutes of actual narrative, and an hour and 25 minutes of running and screaming and shooting and rapid-cut editing.
Damon makes for a solid lead, though Miller does walk a fine line between being heroic and coming off as an unbelievable superhero. Kinnear is nicely shifty as Miller’s on-site arch-nemesis, while Gleeson, struggling to contain his Irish accent, tries his best to lend some noble gravitas to the proceedings... but kind of fails. Too bad the only woman in the cast – Amy Ryan, as a complicit-in-the-cover-up Wall Street Journal reporter – winds up a complete cipher and, frankly, could easily have been left out of the film altogether.
While it likely won’t wow audiences or drive to them to theaters in droves, Green Zone does pack in enough thrills to satisfy an action-hungry viewer. Just be sure you pack the motion-sickness medication if you go.
