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Directed by: Paul Greengrass Premise: Set in Iraq just after the United States
had taken Baghdad, an army captain (Matt Damon) leads searches for weapons of
mass destruction. As his assignments come up empty, the captain follows the
trail of Iraq’s top general to discover the truth. What Works: Green Zone is a very impressive
action film. It delivers the kinds of chases and shootouts that will appeal to
action genre fans but this is also a very smart picture that intertwines fact
and fiction in a very judicious way. Green Zone makes deliberate use of
actual events and applies them to its story, sometimes shaping them to fit the
narrative but also allowing recent history to guide and enhance the plot. Those
familiar with the early history of the war will recognize a lot of characters in
Green Zone; Greg Kinnear plays a fictional Washington bureaucrat charged
with rebuilding Iraq and he is a stand in for L. Paul Bremer, Raad Rawi plays a
political refugee returning to Iraq with hopes of leading it much like Ahmed
Chalabi, Yigal Naor is a character who is a composite of several high ranking
Ba’athist military officials, and Amy Ryan’s role is also a composite of
several American newspaper reporters. Green Zone’s fictional coding of
the material allows it to present the story in a way that satisfies the demands
of the action film and of dramatic storytelling while also giving an accurate
impression of key events at the beginning of the war. Green Zone is
further distinguished as an Iraq war film in that it is one of the only films to
give the Iraqis a voice. Nearly all of the American films made so far about the
war have viewed the conflict through the American experience and while that is
still largely true in Green Zone, the film does give several Iraqi
characters voice and volition. What Doesn’t: The plotting of Green Zone
is by no means air tight and the film relies on a number of coincidences,
especially in the mad dash that is the film’s finale. Some may question the
fictionalization of characters and events and it is a point worth discussing. As
a piece of dramatic storytelling, the film does its job but as an adaptation of
the nonfiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green
Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the fictionalization of the story could be
viewed as disingenuous. Bottom Line: Green Zone is one of the best dramatic films about the war in Iraq. Although it would be helpful for viewers to screen the documentary No End in Sight before watching this film, Green Zone successfully adapts recent history into a very effective thriller. |
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