Review: Green Zone (2010)

Released March 11, 2010

Matt Damon on the prowl in Green Zone

They might as well have called it The Bourne Zone. Reuniting that franchise’s star and director (Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass), Green Zone is a tense thriller set against the still ongoing war in Iraq. While flirting with the war’s politics and the false justification for the U.S. lead invasion, it is first and foremost an action picture, shot in the director’s typically ragged, hand-held style. Haters of the Bourne sequels’ shaky-cam be warned.

The title refers to the international safe zone in central Baghdad that at one time was the home of the transitional government. Set around 2003, it is there we find U.S. soldier Roy Miller (Damon) on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. He begins to question his intel when his MET – Mobile Exploitation Team – fails to find any of the offending devices. Surprise, surprise. The military’s source, he learns, is only known by the name “Magellan”, and has leaked information to an embedded Wall Street Journal reporter, Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan). Local C.I.A. chief (Brendan Gleeson) also feels something is amiss. A machine gun rattle later and Miller finds himself an ally-deprived rogue on a quest for the truth. Sound familiar?

Say what you will about his frantic style, but Greengrass knows how to construct visceral action. His hard-hitting, quick cut realism is just as effective, in its own way, as The Hurt Locker’s slow-burning suspense. Closely resembling the standard man-out-of-his-depth-and-doesn’t-know-who-to-trust thriller, Green Zone fictionalises and condenses years of revelations and debate about the Iraq war into an easily digestible and highly-entertaining format.

Aside from its telling final shot, the film is not interested in judging the war’s legality, only that it is deplorable to deliberately deceive and manipulate. Miller stands in for those courageous individuals who are unwilling to simply accept dogma without question or justification. Early on a seemingly honest Iraqi citizen tells him there's a meeting of high ranking officials up the road. An ambush could be feasible. Despite the danger, Miller chooses to take him up on his suggestion, to which one of his subordinates responds: “Chief, we’re here to do a job, the reasons don’t matter”. “They matter to me,” he replies. I don't think he's alone with that sentiment.

The Informant! (2009)

Released December 3, 2009

Matt Damon in Movember

The versatile Steven Soderbergh's latest film is a dark comedy that feels like a cross between Catch Me If You Can and Burn After Reading.

It’s set in the early 90s but you can never really be sure. Some details, like the brick-sized mobile phones and green text on antiquated computers, fit, but others, from the retro jazzy score and the idyllic white-picket fence suburbia, suggest anything from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The protagonist is equally difficult to define. Portrayed convincingly by a moustache-totin', heavy-set Matt Damon, he is Mark Whitacre, an executive for the agriculture company, ADM. Outwardly a talkative idealist, his thoughts are rendered in a stream of consciousness voice over in which he discusses such important questions as whether or not a polar bear considers its black nose a hindrance to its camouflage. After learning of a price-fixing conspiracy within ADM, and prompted by his wife, he becomes a whistle blower for the FBI and a makeshift undercover agent.

Not trained for the task, he nonetheless blithely manages to clandestinely record meetings and gather enough evidence to convict. Despite planning to expose his coworkers as frauds and swindlers, he still naively believes he will still have a place at the company when the guilty are exposed.

Whitcare is an enigma to the other characters, the audience, and ultimately himself. His journey from the early scenes, which zip by in a blur of 1940s-esque dialogue, to the latter which examine the consequences of the investigation and Whitcare’s ever evolving version of events, is both funny and engaging.

Drowned in a warm lather of yellows and oranges and accompanied by a prominent and bouncy score by Marvin Hamlisch, the film is beautifully constructed. Damon could very well garner Oscar consideration, and again proves that he's both a superstar and a talented actor.