Why would a company interested in making money (so they say) make yet another film trashing the Iraq War? By my count (narratives and documentaries), 13 have already flopped miserably and yet Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass team up for number 14, this one a big-budget studio critique of a war that successfully liberated 25 million innocent people.
Companies truly interested in making a profit don’t behave this way, which is why there’s never been a New Coke 2, much less a New Coke 14. And yet, Universal doubles down on more anti-Americanism using the fig-leaf of “based on a true story” to hide their malicious intentions which — to anyone paying attention — are always exposed by which “true stories” they choose to drop in theaters all over the world.
Here’s the New Yorker description of the book “Green Zone” is based on:
There the Halliburton-run (and Muslim-staffed) cafeteria served pork at every meal–a cultural misstep typical of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had sidelined old Arab hands in favor of Bush loyalists. Not only did many of them have no previous exposure to the Middle East; more than half had never before applied for a passport. While Baghdad burned, American officials revamped the Iraqi tax code and mounted an anti-smoking campaign.
No real need to read beyond “Halliburton.”
But there appears to be trouble in MattDamonLand. Hidden deep within Universal’s announcement that Benicio del Toro’s “Wolfman” (the two-part story of a hairy revolutionary determined to overthrow Transylvania) has been moved to February, comes this:
Universal has moved the release of Paul Greengrass’s Matt Damon-starring Iraq-war drama (and former ostensible Best Picture contender) Green Zone from this fall all the way to March 12. Why? Maybe it’s no good! But more likely, after the box-office failures of Land of the Lost, Public Enemies, and Brüno, Universal just couldn’t withstand another flop in 2009 (and Green Zone, about the fruitless search for WMDs, hardly seems like a blockbuster).
Yanking this from award season (when Oscar-buzz was probably the best hope to not look foolish for making it in the first place) and dumping it in the dog days of March, signals a major lack of confidence. One is left to wonder how Damon likes those apples.
But only now is Universal worried “Green Zone” will flop, even though production began in January of 2008, long after it became obvious this genre was box-office poison. But there were only five Iraq floppers then. Maybe it does take thirteen.
Actually, it doesn’t matter how many fail. This is an ideological war, not a drive for profit.
Ultimately, no one knows how “Green Zone” will do at the box office. Maybe, like the Iraq War, it will prove its harshest critics wrong and end up a successful venture worth the investment.
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