By SHELDON
KIRSHNER, Staff Reporter (
CJN)
Green Zone, Paul Greengrass' ac tion thriller set in Baghdad during and shortly after the 2003 allied invasion of Iraq, resembles his two previous films, The Bourne Ultimatum and United 93, at
least in terms of style.
(video)
Matt Damon stars as a U.S. officer charged with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Now playing in Toronto, Green Zone is a scintillating exercise in filmmaking, full of suspense, intrigue, controlled mayhem and, of course, non-stop violence. In essence, it's like a superior
video game.
But Greengrass, a skilled director, has more than entertainment in mind. Beyond the subliminal level, this is a politically driven film about the futile search for Saddam Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction, the Uni ted States' oft-stated rationale for embarking on what would be an unpopular war.
In short, Greengrass doesn't buy into the thesis that the Iraqi Baathist regime possessed biological, chemical and nu clear weapons of mass destruction after United Nations
inspectors scoured Iraq in the wake of the1991 Gulf War.
As may be recalled, these monitors destroy ed tons of military equipment that Iraq had hoarded for years. Nonetheless, major intelligence agencies in the West were convinced that more such
weapons could be found.
Brian Helgeland's crackling, though sometimes opaque, script is broadly ba sed on Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 2006 book, Imperial Life in the Emerald Zone, a reference to the sedate Baghdad
neighbourhood where Saddam and his closest cronies lived and worked and in which the Americans established their posh headquarters in the aftermath of the invasion.
The film turns on the real-life adven tures of U.S. army chief warrant officer Richard Gonzales, whose ?mobile exploitation team' was tasked with the mis sion of unearthing WMDs.
Gonzales, known in the movie as Roy Miller, is expertly portrayed by the no-nonsense actor Matt Damon. He arrives in Baghdad shortly after the Americans have captured the city in a
shock-and-awe offensive that unseats Sad dam's brutal regime but unleashes a wave of looting, chaos and confusion.
Gung-ho at first, Miller soon comes to the jarring realization that U.S. intelligence data on WMDs is dead wrong.
?The intel's no good,? Miller says. But the Pen tagon's insufferable man in Baghdad, Poundstone (Greg Kin near), begs to differ with his downbeat assessment. ?We'll find wea pons,? he says.
?Don't worry about it.?
Miller recruits Freddy (Khalid Ab dalla), an anti-Saddam local Iraqi, to help him track down Saddam's supposed caches of WMDs. Freddy puts Miller on the trail of a menacing Iraqi general who
may well know where they're hidden.
Miller, however, is on a fool's errand. Brown (Brendan Gleeson), the CIA's Bagh dad bureau chief, claims that ?the cupboard is bare.? Iraq has been swept clean of WMDs. With this subversive
suggestion, Greengrass leaves a viewer with the unmista kable impression that a turf war ? a battle of wills ? has broken out between the CIA and the Pentagon, and that the Pentagon's num ber 1
official in Bagh dad may be concealing a terrible truth.
In trashing the official U.S. account of the war, Greengrass casts doubt on the integrity of a gullible American correspondent (Amy Ryan) who has cov ered the WMD story at length, and suggests
that the Iraqi insurgency could have been nipped in the bud had the United States recruited senior Iraqi army officers and not disbanded key Iraqi ministries. As well, he seems to scoff at the
notion that democracy can be grafted on Iraq's tribal society.
To hammer home his point that the United States stumbled in Iraq, Greengrass replays the now embarrassing May 2003 ?Mission Accomplished' clip in which then-U.S. president George W. Bush
prematurely declared victory.
In a final dig toward the close of Green Zone, Greengrass inserts a scene that encapsulates his perception of the invasion. Freddy, in a heated exchange with Miller, exclaims, ?It's not for you
to declare what happens here.?
From a stric tly moral point of view, Greengrass may be right, but in the world of Realpolitik, he is astonishingly naive.
Source: The Canadian Jewish News
