Green Zone

Introduction

It's the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq and Chief Miller (Matt Damon) heads up a Mobile Exploitation Team, looking for the fabled Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that were the primary justification for the invasion at that time. At his third site and finding nothing, Miller decides it's time to question the veracity of the intelligence, only to be slapped down by his superior officers.

Miller is then introduced to a rather jaded Middle East expert in the CIA called Marty Brown (Brendan Gleeson), who shares the same concerns held by Miller and is looking to find out the identity of the source of this intelligence who is code named Magellan. The one person who is aware of this person's identity is Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), an ambitious civil servant type from Pentagon Special Intelligence but he's not telling as he has ambitions of installing exiled politician Ahmed Zubaidi (Raad Rawi) as the new Iraqi president.

Miller, now at his fourth site, and again empty-handed is accosted by Iraqi civilian Freddy (Khalid Abdalla), who informs him that a secret meeting appears to be taking place in a house nearby. Frustrated, Miller takes his MED team and storms the house during which time a firefight takes place and Miller sees but is unable to capture one of the coalition forces top targets, General Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor). Despite this, Miller and his squad take a number of prisoners and take possession of a notebook that could hold some clues, but whilst waiting for transport a group of Special Forces operatives led by Briggs (Jason Isaacs) swoop in, assault Miller and steal all his prosoners, but not before Miller manages to smuggle the notebook to Freddy.


It's now a race against time to find Al-Rawi and discover the truth about the Magellan intelligence with Miller deemed as expendable by the ambitious Poundstone…

Visual

It seems Paul Greengrass wasn't quite sure how he wanted to shoot this as there's a mix of clear HD shots and some with added grain. Initially you think it's just the night scenes, as it generally is those with the grain, but within some of those same shots, there are different camera angles that are clear.

Overall a pretty decent BD transfer though…


Sound

Nice and load, plenty of gunfire and explosions to test the speakers, although it's only a DTS soundtrack rather than DTS-HD Master Audio. Fine by me, although there will no doubt be some audiophiles who'll be disappointed with this.

Nice selection of subtitles as there generally is with Universal releases.

Extras

A series of short featurettes make up the bulk of this section covering Matt Damon's role and how he fit in with the all ex-Forces personnel who made up his MED team plus a look at the making of the film and how the team went about creating downtown Baghdad. Finally there's a brief look at Chief Monty Gonzales, the real-life frustrated leader of a MED team looking for WMD that Miller is based on.


There's also a film commentary with director Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon and a feature length p-in-p video extra that I just couldn't get the audio working on.

Overall

Green Zone sees the return of the partnership of Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, responsible for the two latter and best films within the Bourne trilogy. This film even seems to have been marketed as Bourne in unifom, but I think that's missing the point. Green Zone is a political thriller set within the war zone of the recently invaded Iraq and asks some rather pertinent questions on just how we got there and the motivations for what we did when we toppled the previous regime.


The primary point, made clear by Damon's role as leader of the MED team, is the fact that no WMD were found in Iraq despite this being our initial justification for going to war in the first place (before our leaders decided that they needed to change this and insist it was all about regime change, and hey, do you support leaving a dictator in place?). I was a participant in the first Gulf war, but merely an interested armchair observer for the second and I still cannot believe that Hans Blix was pulled out of Iraq prior to completing his work. I do believe that we knew WMD were not there at all.

The other question asked is the abolition of the Ba'athist controlled armed forces and the removal of rank and status of all soldiers and officers and the attempted imposition of an exiled politician as the new leader. I have to admit that I had no real view on these events other than the fact that I don't believe that we can supplant our own version of democracy on another country. The events shown in the film (did I mention the torture scene, by the way?) may well be a little too simplistic as things start to unravel but in the long-term I believe them to be pretty accurate. Our primary problem in Iraq, and Afghanistan as well, is that we have our own idea of how these countries should look and operate without really understanding the complex tribal cultures of these nations. The climax of the film involving Freddy the amputee Iraqi sums it up quite well with his phrase "It is not for you Americans to decide what happens here." How very true and when will we finally learn.


This film rode a wave of criticism in the US from irate Right-wingers, some of whom believed this film is anti-American, anti-war and downright slander but ultimately it's an action thriller based on events that may or may not have some basis in fact. Personally I think it's rather a clever film that gives you a decent action thriller plot set against a backdrop of reasonable doubts that many people held at the time and in most cases have probably been reinforced since.

Damon is as good as I've seen him, whilst Jason Isaacs looks like he's auditioning for the Village People with that awful moustache. Special mention definitely needs to go to Matt's co star's as his team, all of which are ex-Forces personnel with very limited, if any, acting experience. Greengrass deliberately brought them on-board in order to boost the authenticity and it works. These guys carry themselves well with a military bearing and you know that when they move, there's a purpose and authority to their movements.

Excellent film, recommended.