Green Zone

This action-packed probe into the war in Iraq turned out to be as good as both of Bourne’s little brothers. Greengrass, Damon and Powell step on the gas absolutely everywhere, but the final action sequence (perfect camera) is unequalled. The tempo, suspense, and the perfect directing workmanship... just superb. Helgeland’s screenplay, based on a lie that was (as always) intended to serve a good cause despite all the dynamics remains in the forefront and points out mistakes that should never be forgotten and swept under the table. If anyone knows how to mix ingenuity and entertainment in one movie, it’s Greengrass. Everything fits nicely together and makes Green Zone a seriously good watch. (2010-06-10)

A word that is often used in connection with cinema is "disappointment." I think I know why, but I’m not going to share it. Fears that Greengrass and Damon would merely swap running around the world's capitals for the dusty roads of Iraq have not come to fruition. Leaning on one spectacular screw-up by the Bush administration and Helgeland's script, they’ve created a compelling, rather conversational thriller that is given momentum by the restless cinematography and Powell's pulsating score. Expecting an action geyser is not worth it because Green Zone is, despite all the impressive set design, a rather modest film with no ambition to entertain, and yet is not at all afraid to point fingers at specific people. It’s based on the lesson that was the motto of a certain spirits advertisement: "There’s always a reason." (2010-06-09)

I can’t avoid the word routine. Gritty editing and rawness are Paul Greengrass's main assets and also the thing he focuses on most in his films, so praising these them seems quite redundant, it'd be like being surprised that a car takes me from one place to another, with nothing else expected from it. The disadvantage of Green Zone is that the topic it deals with cannot be as personal for the viewer as the quest for truth portrayed by the physical person of Jason Bourne, where the viewer can feel and relate to every blow and thought. Here, it’s too global and you are thus detached from the main characters and there is hardly any close connection. The action is good, the pace is good, Matt Damon still knows how to fight, and the music is effective. It simply works well again, but it's only about the story, and that's not enough for me. (2010-07-17)

It would not be dignified to compare this movie to the Jason Bourne series. Let’s overlook the fact that Green Zone does not have Bourne’s entertaining drive, has no compelling music, and takes place from beginning to end in a location that looks like a single dark construction site and tells us nothing about its characters. It is easier to compare it with Ridley Scott’s thematically related Body of Lies, which I rated with three stars and which entertained me more. Green Zone is just a black-and-white militaristic exercise with a directing style that has been applied more successfully and with more vivid colors in other movies. (2010-06-11)

A politically engaged Bourne in Iraq? I’d like to use a line from the movie “don’t be naive", but that wouldn’t be altogether true. As a comparison it rather fits. A lot. A shame about the last third of the movie, however, when it turns off the hitherto path of the story down over-simplified and naively presented political agitation, aimed in the right direction, but the delivery... (especially the last dialog between Miller and Poundstone is just beyond the pale; I would never have expected anything like that from Greengrass). P.S.: Although I understand that a book in newspaper article form which is a bureaucratic odyssey where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, or: “How the Yanks failed to understand that an Arab land after years of tyranny, sanctions and war is not the same as any State of the Union following a natural disaster" is darn hard to turn into a non-documentary movie, but why on earth make a movie about weapons of mass destruction or botched attempts at finding them if there is no mention of either in the book? (2010-05-27)