January 10, 2011: Green Zone
Put Matt Damon into a movie directed by Paul Greengrass, and even though it may not be called a Jason Bourne movie, that’s more or less what it is. Green Zone is a respectable but ultimately ineffective attempt to take the political story of how the US came to be in Iraq in 2003, and tell it in action form, with a total of about 5 characters representing the hundreds or thousands of players who were responsible for the reality.
Damon is a US soldier on the ground during the initial invasion of Iraq in early 2003, on a mission to find the weapons of mass destruction which were supposed to have been stockpiled throughout the country. He’s coming up empty on every raid and starts to make some noise about how he’s endangering his men for what appears to be a wild goose chase. Cue the composite characters. There’s a slimy and evasive Department of Defense guy who is the only one with access to the source who confirmed the presence of the weapons, an earnest and weathered CIA guy who realizes what the truth must be and wants to make the compromise deal which is necessary to stop the carnage, and a reporter who’s on the story, right there to poke at the officials and listen to Damon when he has something to say.
It’s certainly a compelling story, and one which is relevant to most of the world since it was the trigger point for a long economic decline in the US as the war in Iraq bled America’s coffers dry over several years, leaving it in a weakened position when an inevitable global financial collapse took hold about 5 years later. The problem is the comparison of the film to reality. This story has a frightening impact when told with the full details, creating bafflement at how many people could have looked the other way. The way it’s told in Green Zone reduces this historically significant story to just another action movie conspiracy by powerful government people to cause conflict which generates money and more power for them, with a gunslinging American hero in the form of Matt Damon being the only thing that can bring them down. It sounds more like a Rambo movie than a thoughtful examination of how the US ended up in Iraq.
Mind you, I’m not looking for every movie I see to be a masterpiece, and I felt at the time that this was decent entertainment, but it has left me in a confused state as I wonder what’s so wrong with co-opting a big true life story for the sake of an action premise, when completely fabricated action stories get a free ride. I think it has to do with the level of believability. We expect the likes of Sylvester Stallone or Chuck Norris or, indeed, Matt Damon, to singlehandedly work through the conspiracy and bring the perpetrators to justice, often through impalement or other such indignity. But we know that this story wasn’t cracked by one soldier in the field working with one rogue CIA agent, so we can’t suspend disbelief in the face of a hero when there was no hero. Green Zone makes a noble effort to tell a story which needs to be told, but this one has to be either a documentary or a book.
Action movies have to be empty?
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