Green Zone

dir: Paul Greengrass

2010

Mocking things is easy. Real easy.

Fun, too.

It’s also lazy. The easiest and laziest goddamn thing any reviewer had to say about this flick was that, given the participation of the director, shaky-cam cinematographer and lead actor, it’s essentially a Bourne flick without the Jason Bourne character.

These reviews just write themselves, don’t they?

It’s not an insult that carried a lot of weight, because this was in truth more of a fictionalised rendering of actual events, being the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the lies, damned lies and statistics used as the casus belli, or justification for the war itself.

The problem is that a) what they’re referring to, with such seriousness, no-one really gives a fuck about any more, and b) it’s attached to a plot so implausible and uninteresting that I’m not sure if it really justifies its existence independent of the premise.

Don’t misunderstand where I’m coming from: of course I think that it matters that certain members of the previous US Administration lied their arses off, and lied deliberately, not as in a lie of omission or in good faith, to get the nation and the Coalition of the Willing, or COW, as that awesome acronym encapsulates, and other nations to the pro-war table. It was a crime, an obvious crime, on the level or magnitude of the fabricated Gulf of Tonkin incident used to justify ramping up the Vietnam War, or the fabricated ‘murder’ of German peasants dressed up in German uniforms used as the excuse to invade Poland some time in the last century.

Can’t remember when. I’m sure it went well, though, for everyone concerned.

The fact remains, though, since a brutal dictator and his brutish regime were deposed, executed and otherwise disempowered, allowing democracy and puppies to flourish all over Iraq, leading to people hugging and kissing each other in the street for all eternity, people note the big lie, but say, unashamedly, “But what can ya do? Sure it was a lie, but at least those bastards are gone.”

Inevitably it leads to the response, “Would you prefer it if the war had never happened, and those guys were still in power? You, you, you moral relativist, you equivocator, you collaborator! You commie pinko faggot liberal!”

It’s one of those fruitless arguments that goes absolutely fucking nowhere. I hate those pointless arguments, because all anyone does is get more entrenched in their stance and more embedded up their own colon. Everyone who agrees with you already agrees with you. Everyone who disagrees with you hates your fucking guts and will never see things your way.

I’m not implying that such a reality should preclude people saying whatever they want about whatever they want to say. Preaching to the choir doesn’t preclude the possibility that some preachers can preach a mighty fine sermon, and some choirs can sing some might fine tunes.

But the makers of this flick, who want to combine substance with action in order to deliver box office gold, act like what they’re saying is in some way startling, despite the fact that fictionalised in such a way muddies and obscures their message even more than anything.

Am I supposed to take away from this that Greg Kinnear lied about the weapons of mass destruction in order to convince people to go to war with Iraq? No? Then is it his character, Clark Poundstone, who in reality lied in order to further the Administration’s objectives? No? Oh, so none of the characters in this actually have real life counterparts, even if there are parallels?

Then what is this? Docu-fiction? Edu-action-tainment? Fictional Verite?

No. It’s nothing. It’s less than nothing. It’s preening, well-meaning dribble.

That’s not to say that the flick is not completely unenjoyable to watch. Although it bugged me the way Matt Damon kept saying, in an affected, puzzled, naïve manner, “So why aren’t their any WMDs? Where are the WMDs? What’s going on?” he’s not horrible in this flick. He’s competent enough. I wouldn’t exactly call what he does acting in this flick, but I think since most of them though they were performing a community service by bringing this story to the big screen, they thought they owed the material the humblest, most mechanical of performances. Anything else probably wouldn’t have been respectful enough of the material.

Damon, who I kept expecting to yell out his own name “MATT DAMON!!!” like his puppet does in Team America: World Police, plays a Chief Warrant Officer in His Majesty’s Army, tasked along with his unit to search out, secure and remove the millions and millions of tonnes of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons developed by the Iraqis in between 1991 and 2003. All this is transpiring just after the invasion itself, where America rolled into Baghdad and was greeted with garlands of desert flowers and the kisses of barefooted maidens. He has been given some great intel which swears up and down that there are plenty of weapons secreted in toilet factories and warehouses.

After another search where nothing turns up, he gets dragged into an altercation which results in some one-legged guy saying something about an important meeting taking place nearby, where some Baathist high-ups are debating whether to turn themselves in, or whether to take up arms against the invaders. Key amongst them is a shiny headed chap with an awesome moustache, who also happens to be the Jack of Clubs in the deck of cards of the Most Wanted.

General Al Rawi (Yigal Naor) is a fearsome looking guy. I’m afraid of him, and I know he’s just an actor playing a character. But he’ll be in my nightmares, don’t you worry. And if my daughter misbehaves, I’ll be telling her that General Al Rawi will be after her if she doesn’t listen to me.

When Miller comes across the meeting, some guys just hanging out, who happen to be carrying AK’s around like they’re a fashion accessory, lots of people die so that Miller can get his hands on a book.

Now, as maguffins go, this book is a treasure. Half of what happens in the rest of the flick depends on this book, but the book itself is so utterly unlikely that I can’t help but think this script was constructed not by well-meaning screenwriters but instead by bomb-disposal robots that accidentally had some screenplay writing software uploaded into their limited but effective brains.

I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler, but if your nation was just invaded, and you felt you were a wanted man or someone at least who could expect reprisal, would you write down in a book all the places you were likely to hide out in? Wouldn’t you just verbally tell the least amount of people possible? Why write your goddamn itinerary and list of safehouses down?

Why would you distribute such a book? Why would it even need to be a book? How about a disk with a PowerPoint presentation with everywhere you’re planning on being, when, and what you’d like for breakfast on each given day?

Why not give the Americans your GPS location instead?

Whatever, it’s probably not as dumb as it sounds, but it’s still plenty dumb. Miller manfully bullies his way across Baghdad, even as other people, including some CIA guys, some Special Forces guys, some other shmucks try to stop him from finding out the fundamental truth about how the United States came to make up the bullshit about the WMDs. There’s even a complicit journalist (Amy Ryan) who played a part in distributing the lies without questioning them. She’s got nothing to do, either. Bloody journalists.

The film climaxes with a race to see who can get to General Al Rawi first: the people who want to silence him, the people who want to save him so he can testify about the lies, and the people who just want to borrow some money off of him. All I need is a fifty, that’s all I need. I swear I can pay you back next week, week after at the latest. Look well how about a twenty then? Anything you can spare, I’d be so grateful, man. Oh, come on, you were a general in the Republican Guard, for Christ’s sake, you can afford it. Please?

The ending, whilst exciting from an action point of view, is utterly implausible, and is a total cheat on so many levels. I can’t bring myself to spoil the end, but man, does it fucking reek. And the way the makers try to tie up everything in a neat bow with a certain letter that goes to the media, with no evidence, with no substantiation or corroboration, is doubly insulting to the audience.

Fictionalising real world events in order to give your movies resonance is not a crime in and of itself. Doing it well produces powerful and much beloved movies. Doing it badly doesn’t just produce mediocre movies, it colours our view of events in ways that do not reflect positively on the intentions of the makers.

There are some elements the film gets right, like giving us an impression of what it might have been like in Iraq just after the invasion and before the insurgency started, where soldiers and officials are taking up residency in opulent staterooms that are only partially blown up. The symbols of the late dictator’s reign are also still up everywhere, letting us not forget what went on before. One really good scene (though with little if any dramatic payoff) has soldiers just in from the field walking into the lavish paradise of a hotel / palace’s pool area, juxtaposing the horror they face with the genteel luxury ‘faced’ by the administration hacks and their hangers-on.

It’s too little too late. This flick might have entertained me every now and then, but its dishonesty and faux earnestness bugged the fuck out of me. It’s well-meaning dribble, but it’s dribble just the same. Miller’s complicity in a tonne of deaths just makes no fucking sense. There’s no reason, no justification for half the shit he does towards the end, and a dishonourable discharge and court martial would be the least of his worries.

Avoidance should be your strategy unless you’re very, very curious, dear reader. After all, there are new Twilight movies to be watched instead.

5 times a one-legged guy hops around whose only purpose is to hop around and kill someone inconvenient right at the end out of 10

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“You do not decide what happens in this country” – Green Zone.