Green Zone (2010)

The War on Terror as it should be depicted: violent, messy, unstable, and treacherous.

After the tumultuous attempts by Hollywood to tell the story of the war in Iraq, Paul Greengrass follows up his awesome United 93 with a movie that avoids the heroic patriotism or the paranoiac corruption that so many have opted for, and just tells the story with the facts that we know...mostly.

Matt Damon plays rogue U.S. Army officer Chief Miller, who becomes disillusioned with the false intelligence that report WMDs in locations that are empty, and takes matters into his own hands. With the help of a humble Iraqi citizen and his loyal band of soldiers, Miller goes in search of the Iraqi army leaders, in an attempt to find the elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. As the complexities of war in the Middle East begins to mount, Miller finds himself caught between a violent enemy, and a corrupt friend.

A worthy film, that is poignant and telling. Rather than attempt to understand the whole of the war, Green Zone examines the fateful beginnings, looking at the mistakes that led to an insurgency that would last years. The storm clouds that gather are depressingly real, and the audience cannot help but hope for a different outcome than the one we know will arrive. Damon is a superb choice for the role of Miller, giving depth to the action hero. Locations are excellent, making the film feel claustrophobic and gritty. One of the downsides is that this film, like the war, keeps a tempo that is hard to maintain, and audiences may find it difficult to keep up. It is, however, and excellent film that stands head and shoulders about most of its rivals.

Few films about the war on terror are worth mentioning, but Green Zone falls into that selective category. Others, for me, are Rendition, United 93, Lions for Lambs and a few others.

One wonders about future representations of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and whether filmmakers will produce movies that capture the deeply troubling issues at the heart.