Charging forward with a run-and-gun electricity and a very familiar immediacy, Paul Greengrass’ “Green Zone” might be —as some have already posited or flippantly remarked— “Bourne 4” in Iraq but nevertheless it still crackles with an in-the-moment urgency that is undeniably captivating.
With the two latter ‘Bourne’ movies — “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” — Greengrass not only reversed engineered the spy genre and reassembled it, he game-changed it, modernizing and radicalizing the films with a realistic magneticism that has colored all action spy films since. Even the mother of all spy films, the Bond series, quickly responded and essentially aped the authentic aesthetics wholesale with the successful, franchise-revitalizing “Casino Royale.” ‘Bourne’ is essentially to action, what Nirvana was to post-grunge and the Stone Temple Pilots of the world. A whole new generation of filmmakers are still embracing the new template Greengrass ushered in (minus 15% of the nausea-inducing camera shaky-cam work; but think of every trade report that defines a new project as “Bourne-esque”).
So that said, “Green Zone” doesn’t stray far from this new formula at all. The action is still knee-deep in the kinetic genre cubism style perfected in the ‘Bourne’ films, but it ultimately does not hurt the story. In fact, it appears to be a sly way to inject a carefully balanced degree of polemics into mainstream audiences who have generally run in the opposite direction when Iraq War pictures have reared their head (c’mon Middle America, have your sons and daughters are there, why stick your heads in the sands?).
Based on the nonfiction book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone” by journalist Rajv Chandrasekaran and turned into a screenplay by Brian Helgeland (“L.A. Confidential, “Mystic River,” “Robin Hood”) the fourth Matt Damon/Greengass collaboration is structured more like a conspiracy thriller than anything else.
After a brief prologue set during a visually fantastic shock and awe campaign, the picture introduces us to the idealistic yet hardheaded Army chief warrant officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) as he and his WMD team seek out stockpiles of dangerous weapons. After putting his subordinates lives at risk on a daily basis, Miller’s frustration grows as his seek and destroy missions constantly come as wasted efforts that yield zero results.
Recognizing a pattern, Miller raises his objections to his superiors — among them a slimy administration goon played by Greg Kinnear as an obvious Paul Bremer stand-in. Miller begins to question the intelligence they’re given and brashly speaks out, daring to call it faulty in a large townhall-like meeting and is quickly told to “stand down.” The message reads loud and clear, the President and the media are expecting to find WMDs and by god, they will find some.
Two small, but crucial characters then enter the frame: A CIA agent (Brendon Gleason) who notices Miller’s insubordination and who begins to tip him off to the fact his educated hunches are not off and a key Wall Street Journal reporter (Amy Ryan) who wrote the integral “sources tell us their are WMDs in Iraq” article that helped sell the war to the public (she’s essentially a Judith Miller-type surrogate duped by government sources into reporting that WMDs existed).
From there a complex web of deceit and intrigue evolves and spreads and the picture races along as a sort of intense action/mystery thriller that rockets ahead like a camera loosely tied to the top of a speeding humvee. Greengrass stages the action (and there is plenty of it) with the same fractured virtuoso electricity that he brought to the ‘Bourne’ franchise (captured by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd and a small army of assistant directors). But here, the adrenaline is rooted in a strong, savvy political commentary. It’s a race against time for Damon to figure out the mystery but there’s also a ticking clock for Iraq —as Kinnear plans to disband the military, a catastrophic real-life decision — but never do the polemic overwhelm the entertainment of the piece.
At times the movie plays like a fictionalized, hopped-up version of “No End in Sight,” the exemplary 2007 documentary by Charles Ferguson, about the colossal, early-occupation fuck-ups that essentially lost the war for America. In “Green Zone,” fact and fiction interact in vital, galvanizing ways. But slowly the historical details fade into little more than bumpy background texture (watch as looters whiz by, reel at the massive urban bombing campaigns); texture that matters, mind you, but texture pushed to the background just the same.
“Green Zone” is a cracking entertainment and the cynical edge gives it some much-needed heft. What might feel like a downside to Greengrass’ antic, breathless running-and-gunning it’s that character might feel scarce to an insane degree. However, that’s deceptive and the screenplay doesn’t bother with the obvious. In reality, much like say Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” these are men who’s actions define them as people. Damon’s reckless pursuit for the truth and his attempts to restore order speak volumes about what type of person he is. Characterization-through-physical action is a hard thing to pull off (done masterfully by Akira Kurosawa and more recently in John McTiernan’s heyday) and while there might not be complete depth to Damon’s Miller, what we find is a vocal patriot, who is willing to put himself on the line for the truth.
Once the relentlessly compelling movie ends, and you can compose yourself, you realize what a ballsy piece of big budget filmmaking “Green Zone” really is. Yes, bombastically in-your-face theatrics were expected from the man who rewrote action movie theatrics in the last decade, but what’s less expected was an equally in-your-face commentary about an ongoing military quagmire.
If there’s one complaint about “Green Zone,” its that it takes a complex story and essentially distills it down to simplistic, easily-digestible politics. We all know how the WMD story went down and the self-righteousness of the patriotic, but now grossly disappointed Miller character and finger pointing becomes facile and might rub some the wrong way (though those of the liberal persuasion might find the conclusion rather satisfying).
While “Green Zone” sticks closely to the ‘Bourne’ playbook — the urgent narrative, the kinetic, in-the-moment shaky-cam and the pulsating score, again by John Powell — the thriller is trying to say something different, albeit via the same arsenal of tricks.
While “United 93” was very in the moment, but it steered clear of politicizing thanks to its focus on the human drama. Here, much of the human drama is foregone in the swirl of commentary and action. It’s a heady, singular mixture for sure; it’s also an undeniably thrilling one. [A-]