Recently, some Iraq war veterans voiced complaints over the level of accuracy in Katherine Bigelow’s Oscar-winning film
The Hurt Locker. You can only imagine their response to
The Green Zone, which takes even more liberties. Most likely, they’ll be too busy howling with laughter to mount a protest any time soon. The idea of U.S. Army officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) abandoning his mission of searching for Iraqi WMDs to suddenly go rogue and morph into a Jason Bourne type of character might work if this were merely a liberal variation on the sort of action movies Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris made back in the ’80s. Unfortunately, the trademark documentary style of director Paul Greengrass (
United 93,
The Bourne Ultimatum) and the film’s constant proselytizing indicate that we’re supposed to take this nonsense seriously, and that’s just not possible. “Inspired by” the Rajiv Chandrasekaran book
Imperial Life In The Emerald City, the film merely cherry picked a few facts and observations and shoehorned them into a dunderheaded action movie script. Even if you agree with the politics, it’s hard not to be embarrassed by the manner in which it goes about imparting its message. Greengrass does stage a few gripping action scenes early on, but the film is so relentlessly over-the-top that it eventually just wears on you. *
