- You know how Paul Greengrass saves money on his films? By not hiring a steadicam operator. Seriously, guy, are you incapable of making a film without camera shake? Really? I count myself lucky that this is the first time that one of his movies hasn’t made me want to throw up on the person in front of me. On the other hand, the final fire fight is such a jumbled mess of images that you really have no idea what is happening, who is alive, or who is dead. I know that this is supposed to lend the film a sense of “gritty realism” that apparently closely mimics the chaos of being involved in a street fight of this nature, but you can’t be so haphazard that the whole thing becomes nonsensical. Shaky cam will never make me happy.
- This movie is about as politically neutered as Lions for Lambs was three years ago. It grandstands about asking tough questions about the war in Iraq but then fails to cut to the jugular by asking probing questions that might actually be illuminating for the audience. There’s no question that this is definitely a left-leaning film, but its politics are surprisingly after school special quality. My greatest fear is actually that this is as far as the filmmakers thought they could go in a country where huge numbers of people still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Baby steps. I don’t know.
I wouldn’t even call this film anti-war, just anti-war for the wrong reasons. Matt Damon’s character doesn’t have a problem being in Iraq, he just wants to make sure that he’s there for legitimate reasons and not because someone made up an excuse to invade.
- There are a lot of satellite dishes on the roofs of Iraq.
- I think Brendan Gleeson was trying to play American but didn’t hide his accent very well.
- Matt Damon, king of the thinking man’s action film, was fine in this, even though it’s not really a thinking man’s action film. He’s got the “one man against the world in the pursuit of justice” thing down pat at this point.
- Speaking of which, there is a faction of American troops who have been commanded by evil Greg Kinnear to shut down Matt Damon’s attempts to reveal the truth about WMD. They were led by a hilariously awful guy with a handlebar mustache and I kept thinking he reminded me of Jason Isaacs, and then I realised I couldn’t remember the last thing I saw Isaacs in (besides Harry Potter). Turns out it was Isaacs. Oops.
- I’ve never heard of Jerry Della Salla before but he got the part that was probably described in casting calls as the Tom Sizemore role.
- The guy who played Freddy was pretty excellent.
- The subtitles had a black drop shadow behind them, thank god.
- The action scenes were heavily scored with unnecessary music. Steve didn’t need this for Saving Private Ryan and you don’t either, Paulie. Just let these sequences breathe on their own; there’s enough noise and and drama to get your adrenaline pumping, you don’t need music to heighten things even more.
- Amazing examples of public art: the arch formed over the street by two giant crossed swords. I know that this is just symptomatic of the kind of propagandistic art you get in totalitarian societies, but taken out of context everyone likes crossed swords.
Green Zone
Paul Greengrass apparently attended Michael Bay’s “How To Blow Shit Up” summer camp last year.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Discovering covert and faulty intelligence causes a U.S. Army officer to go rogue as he hunts for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region.
WORD. The dude who played Freddy was pretty excellent. Otherwise this movie was just okay.
I’m sick and tired of hearing “gritty realism” whenever Paul Greengrass’s name is mentioned. Real life doesn’t have me wanting to puke my guts.