Green Zone movie review from modmove

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Green Zone
After the admirably apolitical The Hurt Locker comes the intensely political Green Zone, a story about the lies perpetuated by the US military machine regarding the existence of WMDs in Iraq and the efforts of one front-line grunt (who bears a striking resemblance to Matt Damon) to expose the truth. The result is a mixed bag of high tension, the destruction thereof and a blurring of the lines between fact and fiction.

Hand held camera work is Paul Greengrass' strength as it is his bane. In some instances, like the films opening scenes for example, the disorientation and confusion which this cinematographic technique creates complements perfectly the uncertainty and chaos in the action on screen - fear, bombs, looters, an army in disarray - the depiction of an uncontrolled environment using an equally uncontrolled camera style is masterfully appropriate. At other times, however, it just seems lazy, like nobody could be bothered setting up a dolly or even a tripod. A chase scene, for instance, is not uncontrolled. It is a precise combination of events: A is followed by B, B is followed by C, D and E etc. It is important to be able to follow these details in order to comprehend the action but when shakily shot by Greengrass it is impossible to determine who is chasing who, who just got shot or where anybody is in relation to anybody else. There's nothing for the audience to do but watch glazy eyed until the dust settles and find out who's left standing at the end. Similarly, employing shaky-cam within the strictly controlled environs of a military briefing also makes no sense and smacks of laziness.

The film weaves fact with fiction in a way that makes it difficult to distinguish the boundary between the two - unless, perhaps, you happen to be a Gulf War analyst. But most of us are not which makes the film’s approach somewhat questionable considering the conflict in question is ongoing and the effect the film may have on the public consciousness as regards the truth of the matter. And public consciousness, of course, influences politics. While this can be a positive force, it can be a negative one as well; so defined boundaries of truth are paramount. Perhaps it would be appropriate to preface films such as this with a disclaimer emphasizing the fictional nature of some of its elements? This would have been appropriate in some other films of modern historical significance; the otherwise excellent The Last King Of Scotland comes to mind.

Some inherent social responsibility is required of a film like this and I'm not convinced Greengrass takes this seriously enough. That point aside, Greengrass certainly knows how to create tension in his films but he also (unwittingly presumably) knows how to destroy it. The result is that Green Zone is a mixed bag of everything that is good and bad about the Greengrass style and as such this will be considered one of his lesser works, sitting below the likes of United 93 and The Bourne Ultimatum.
Stuart Jamieson
www.greenzonemovie.com

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