The poetic irony of the delayed release of the shaky-cammed Hollywood temper tantrum known as “Green Zone” couldn’t be sweeter. Yes, the very same week our Iraqi allies held a historic election that ended up much more successful than we could have ever hoped, our own Hollywood swoops in with a piece of cinematic sour grapes in the frantic, desperate hope of rewriting the history of a war they were so eager for us to lose.
After making the last two “Bourne” films together, director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon have teamed up again in an un-thrilling attempt to transfer that same success to the streets of Baghdad. But this time within a very real and recent historical event, the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a vacuum where history doesn’t exist, the film’s absurd premise would still undermine itself. But Greengrass isn’t working in a vacuum. Unfortunately for him, we all know the truth and this truth reduces his story to a strained, poorly contrived, episodic, Hollywood Hills fever dream that no amount of suspended disbelief can overcome.
Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, a good soldier in charge of an army team on the search for WMD four weeks after shock and awe. Baghdad is in chaos as the newly liberated Iraqis loot the city and scattered snipers take potshots at anyone wearing the American flag. Miller risks his own life and those of his men based on intelligence that’s supposed to reveal the location of Saddam’s WMD facilities. And this is the third time they’ve come up empty. Frustrated and angry, Miller starts to ask questions and demand answers about the source of the intel. Naturally, his commanding officers aren’t interested in answering those questions or even facing the possibility the weapons might not be found. That would upset the Bush administration’s narrative of the New Iraq.
SPOILERS COMING
Miller’s skepticism draws the attention of CIA station head Martin Brown, a character who should’ve been called Liberal Argument because his job is to spout leftist talking points as Greengrass muscles the truth to insure Brown’s proved correct. Brown and Miller join forces to find the source of the intel, whose known only by the code name Magellan. Poundstone, a sleazy Pentagon senior Bush official played by Greg Kinnear, has sole access to Magellan, and using him as a source, made the case for the war with the help of Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), a Wall Street Journal reporter who reported as gospel Magellan’s dire warnings about Saddam’s chemical, nuclear and biological weapons.
Greengrass’s absurd, twisted little fantasy is that this lie caused the insurgency that would eventually result in the deaths of thousands of Americans soldiers. It works something like this (I think). In Jordan, before the war, one of Saddam’s generals held a secret meeting with Poundstone and told him there were no WMD. So desperate was the Bush administration to go to war, they ignored this and went ahead with the invasion anyway. The problem is that the only man who can stop the insurgency is also this same general, who must now be killed in order to cover up that the administration knew there were no WMD.
This hysterical lie Greengrass, Damon, and Universal Studios have invested so much in is so laughably desperate I’m still having trouble believing they told it. Seemingly intelligent people have positioned $150 million dollars worth of propaganda on a stool with one wobbly leg. How did they delude themselves into believing that leg wouldn’t be immediately kicked out from under and the whole tower of bull shit collapsed as soon as everyone in the audience with an IQ above 75 remembered the well known fact that the United Nations, France, Germany, and Russia (among others) all had the same intel we did showing Saddam in possession of WMD?
Even removing the context of history and truth, the premise is still a completely illogical storytelling device that asks us to buy into the idea that a general from the enemy’s army convinced a Pentagon official Saddam wasn’t in possession of WMD. Why would Poundstone believe him? What did this General show him that was so convincing and incontrovertible? Poundstone, however, is so terrified of this information getting out that he orders up a big conspiracy to have the General and Miller killed — instead of, you know, telling the press, “The General did tell me there were WMD and now he’s lying.”
As the story plods along — and plod it does with zero tension — the moral hole Greengrass obviously has in his heart, ultimately turns on our own troops. Miller’s job is to go rogue and save this Ba’athist General — the only man who can save us from the coming insurgency (as the thuddish exposition that mars the whole script continually reminds us). But there has to be bad guys, so Greengrass chooses the American Special Forces and turns them into a brutal team of ruthless killers working for Poundstone. By the time the third act arrives, all of unholy Hollywood is hoping we’ll cheer as Saddam’s former henchmen, the monsters behind those mass graves, shoot down a helicopter full of American servicemen.
I just felt sick.
The Iraqi people don’t come off much better. There’s one Iraqi man Miller uses as a translator. We’ll call him Ali-Token. But in the end he comes off a self-destructive fool. The rest are nameless and faceless, alternately selfish looters or helpless, pathetic victims of the invasion. This refusal to humanize the Iraqi people is part of the leftist gameplan. To make them real and sympathetic is to say they were worthy of liberation. Can’t have that.
In Matt Damon’s Iraq there are no mass graves and there are certainly no terrorists, only dark, brutal nightmarish prisons manned by American soldiers. Outside our men terrify helpless Iraqi prisoners with German Shephards. Inside they’re choked, bruised, bloodied and kept in black hoods. There’s also no New York Times. Even though the Lawrie Dayne character is obviously based on Judith Miller and her reporting in the liberal Times, the newspaper Dayne works for is the conservative Wall Street Journal. The L.A. Times’ Chief Water Carrier tried to explain this obvious bias away by informing us that the studio was worried about a lawsuit — as though no one thought to consider a fictional newspaper name.
Politics aside, Greengrass and his shaky-cam have finally reached the full self-parody stage. During the “Bourne” films I at least wished I could see what was going on. Here, especially during what’s supposed to be the big, important climatic set-piece, the camera is so epileptic and the lighting so dark you tune out and go to your happy place. That place where the multi-millionaires in charge of the most powerful propaganda device known to man aren’t soulless liars at war with us.
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