| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 03/12/2010 : 14:34:41
What makes Paul Greengrass's film so much better than The Hurt Locker on every level is his commitment to a bigger picture. I'm not questioning Bigelow's desire to tell truths - though, despite the pre-release hype she never really awards a balanced account. She's interested in a small canvas view of how one soldier comes to depend on the camaraderie of a small cadre of similar soldiers in the face of a job that by rights should drive him mad. That she counterpoints that with the impossibility of finding any respite in his so-called normal homelife, makes her film seem as though it's telling the truth and nothing but.
Then you watch The Green Zone - different war, different tactics, but Greengrass is so unafraid to step back and view a wider picture that you're not quite aware of how complicit he's made you until you're out in the free fresh air.
He creates such moment-by-moment credibility in realizing Brian Helgeland's fast-paced intelligent, and gripping adaptation of Washington Post's National Editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran's fantasically well-informed award-winning book.
The book, and contemporaneous media articles and broadcasts, provide the real-life characters which Helgeland has fictionalized for the film. The aura of authenticity is palpable.
Greengrass's hero, Matt Damon is excellent as Warrant Officer Roy Miller, in charge of locating WMDs after the initial Shock and Awe Bush visited on Iraq in 2003. He becomes aware of disparities in the various versions of events coming from different political sources, and cannot square the fact that his intel keeps coming up empty. "I thought we were all on the same side," he bemoans, gradually realizing there are conflicting agendas.
At first confused as to what his duty is, he eventually takes a stance, and following it to its often obscenely distressful conclusions is what the film is about.
Performances are generally excellent, supporting Damon all the way. Both Amy Ryan as a Washington Post reporter and Yigal Naor as a Bathist General give particularly powerful and understated characterizations. Special mention should go to Barry Ackroyd, the UK cinematographer beloved by Ken Loach and who also worked on United 93 with Greengrass as well as Kathryn Bigelow on The Hurt Locker. Together with Bourne Ultimatum editor Christopher Rouse, they provide some of the most convincing war settings you'll ever see.
As well as being a highly articulate film, you won't ever be side-barred by intellect, despite its ubiquitous presence. It's a visceral experience and a sobering one.
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| 4 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 04/01/2010 : 05:00:35
BiggerBoat nails one of my big complaints about this -- that it turns real life events into so much Hollywood bullshit. For the most part, it wants to be a true-to-life retelling, but there was no Matt Damon who spilled the beans to the rest of the world. Nothing in here happened. A couple characters are playing fictionalized versions of real people (Greg Kinnear is Iraq Administrator L. Paul Bremer, Amy Ryan is the New York Times's Judith Miller), and I can just imagine those real people sitting in the theater watching the movie, repeating their on-screen avatar's dialogue in a mocking tone while making jerk-off motions. Furthermore, the Bremer character (spoiler) actually falsifies intelligence to make the case for war, which is both unfair to Bremer (an incompetent man, but hardly evil) but also not true; the Bush administration cherry-picked intelligence that fit their narrative (no matter how weak), but I don't think I've seen any evidence that they faked anything.
The other big problem is that the grand revelation of Green Zone is that there are no WMDs in Iraq. Gasp, scandal. This is news that has gone completely stale to me. We need something like All the President's Men, something that makes the story vivid instead of just assuming I'm going to be angry about something I found about years ago. |
| BiggerBoat |
Posted - 03/31/2010 : 15:25:28
I watched this last night and have to agree with Baffy that it is a better film than the over-hyped Hurt Locker. I think that they approach the subject of the futility of war in two profoundly diffrent ways:
In Hurt Locker, as Baffy touched on, it is through the cameradery with colleagues that soldiers can find some kind of reassurance from the horrors they are viewing and experiencing. War-mongering leaders aren't stupid - they understand that the allegiance that a soldier will show is rarely down to a belief in the 'cause' they are (supposedly) fighting for; more likely is down to sense of belonging (the first time they experience this in some cases) and comradeship with their, er, comrades.
You can feed soldiers any old guff about what their role is in any conflict - what it essentially comes down to in the end is 'kill or be killed'. When human instinct kicks in they couldn't give a stuff about right and wrong, morals, religion, politics or anything else - it's about survival. That the Jeremy Renner character [SPOILER] has his unfeeling shell penetrated by the possibility that the young boy may have died is a reflection that emotion is normally switched off in a combat zone - he's the exception that proves the rule. I felt that Bigelow should have been more critical of this as the modus operandi rather than making us sympathetic to the one character who actually feels.
In Green Zone we had that rarest of things - an intelligent AND moralistic soldier. As we see Matt Damon's character begin to uncover the truth about why he (and the rest of the US army) are there, we become more and more aware that it's pretty much him against the rest. And yet he perseveres. Near the beginning of the film he's told by his commanding officer that he should keep quiet about what he's found because it's 'not what Washington wants to hear'.
And so he attempts to uncover the plot - which is where I began to get a bit jumpy because if this was 'based' on a true story (and it appeared to be the most convincing portrayal I've ever seen) then I knew that the truth would not come out, because it hasn't in real life.
And so it panned out this way. But, the denouement required some kind of heroic act from our man, something that would blow this story wide open - the email of his critical report to all the top journalists. Great, good job Matt. But hang on, this basic story (or something very similar) is what actually happened. So where are the convictions? Where are the enquiries that actually allow the truth to come out and the guilty to be punished? Where is the codemnation from the rest of the world?
I mentioned the futility of war at the beginning. I think that to be more accurate it would have to regarded, actually, as the futility of life. It's a great film with that rarest of things - integrity - and yet, when it comes down to it, it means nothing - because it won't change anything. Matt Damon couldn't change anything and nor could Paul Greengrass. And you can't either so you better suck it up, because those fuckers 'in charge' are going to create misery wherever it suits them best, and you might just be next.
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| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 03/28/2010 : 21:03:55
Sorry that I didn't find this thread before, on account of the fact that the above is not the film's name.
Here is the text from my thread:
Green Zone
I thought it was good. It doesn't seem especially similar to Bourne to me, though, so I don't really like the reviews referring to that. The general premise is an easy sell, of course, and I'm not very well versed on how Americans were scammed when it came to W.M.D.s (which they annoyingly call just W.M.D. in this, even in the plural) but I'm glad that a Hollywood blockbuster is doing its bit to hold our governments to account. That said, it does kinda present it as being down to just one guy.
4/5 |
| ChocolateLady |
Posted - 03/13/2010 : 10:51:39
Now THIS looks interesting.
(And I see Israeli Yigal Naor - playing yet another Arab. I guess it was inevitable after his excellent portrayal of Saddam Hussein in that "House of Saddam" mini-series.)
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