Movie: Green Zone

• Director: Paul Greengrass
• Release Date:
• Writers: Brian Helgeland
• Run Time: 115
• Genre: Action, Drama, Thriller, War

Tagline: Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller is done following orders.

Review: I always find it slightly comical when people complain of hand-held camera-work. It reminds me of an old woman hearing The Chemical Brothers and wincing in pain – “They don really call that music do they?” Personally, my eyes have been able to follow a moving object ever since I was a child. I have no problem with a hand-held camera.

As for the movie, Green Zone is an excellent action thriller about a US Army Warrant Officer investigating the shady reasons why the military intelligence being fed to the Iraq Survey Group is failing to uncover weapons of mass destruction in post-invasion Baghdad. Much of the ensuing shenanigans are inspired by the findings of both the Iraq Intelligence Commission Report and the UKs Butler Review, which in 2004 found that pre-war intelligence had been highly suspect.

I say inspired because Green Zone is fiction—unless I blinked and missed it, theres no opening title card claiming “based on a true story”. Conservatives, so often unable to discern fact from fiction, will view the film as a piece of docudrama reportage and find it deeply flawed, as it would be if it purported to be such a thing. The rest of us will recognize that Greengrass has crafted an excellent conspiracy thriller that simply uses the controversial politics of post-war Iraq as background color, and does so very well. As is to be expected from a director who, at this point in his career, can do this stuff in his sleep, the action sequences are brilliantly choreographed, the tension masterfully built, and the characters multi-layered. The cinematography that others have called “ugly” I found added a sense of realism, particularly in the grainy night scenes. My only complaint is a couple of instances in which Iraqi characters begin spouting embarrassing soap-box polemic. It isn that such thoughts are out of character, just the way they are expressed; the dialogue being too obvious and cheesy. Thankfully, such moments can be counted in seconds rather than minutes. Whats so impressive about Green Zone is the seemingly authentic locations. It really does look as though it were filmed in Baghdad. Instead, it was shot on location in England and Spain. A production designer hasn worked such magic since Full Metal Jacket converted a London parking lot into the battlefields of Vietnam.

Green Zone is an excellent movie that will be thoroughly enjoyed by fans of political conspiracy thrillers. It isn presented as factual, and only fools would look to a movie for facts. For facts, read books or, better yet, read the Iraq Intelligence Commission Report and the Butler Review. But don blame Paul Greengrass for your laziness and stupidity in mistaking his excellent movie for a representation of ruth.