Green Zone: Movie Review

AHHH! Misleading trailers! When will it end? Fortunately for "Green Zone" Matt Damon stars, and Paul Greengrass directs. Not for those two awesome elements, I would be much angrier about being hoodwinked by yet another trailer. The story is cool, and some of it's true. It's well written at points, but suffers in others. Greengrass' directing style is back in full-form, and is solid as usual. The performances are good. Overall it's put together well. It's a nice project but somehow, in the end, I feel this could be forgettable for me. Here's what I'm thinking...

"Green Zone" tells the story of Army CWO Roy Miller (Damon). He and his men are tasked with finding W.M.D in Iraq. Since we know already how this true story turns out, there's not much to say. Miller and team come up empty continually. Through a self-launched investigation, Miller finds out there's more going on than just bad intelligence and not finding W.M.D. As a whole, I enjoy the story. It's well paced, nearly perfectly paced in fact - it kept my attention wonderfully. It's interesting, exciting, and has some cool action.

The story does have its flaws, however. In my opinion, it suffers due to the complete lack of character development. As the audience, we don't really know the first thing about Miller...other than his name. However, I will say that the movie does not suffer because of this fact. Simply, it is something I noticed, and wasn't thrilled about. Knowing more about the character helps rope me in more, makes me care. It's not that I didn't care about Miller, I just found him to be too much of a mystery.

This movie is directed by Paul Greengrass of "The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum", and "United 93" fame. His shaky-cam style is back as well. I've dug his approach from the beginning, but fair warning to those who haven't, "Green Zone" is more of the same. I saw one review saying something to the effect of, "there isn't a stable shot the whole movie". Well, no shit; it's a Paul Greengrass movie. Should anyone be surprised? Perhaps the reviewer hasn't seen Greengrass' last three films. Anyway, as usual I've digressed. I thought the film was shot, and directed greatly. Again though, I enjoy his filmmaking.

Matt Damon is back from what I considered a huge slump during "Invictus". Quite honestly, I don't know how he got an Oscar nod for that one. That aside, I enjoyed seeing him back in kick ass mode. He did a great job of embodying a battle-hardened solider. The following is more about the character than the actor, but I dug how real world this guy was. By this I mean he's different from Bourne in that he's a regular guy. He hasn't been trained to be an invisible assassin. He's just a regular guy out in the shit, and there's a point I wasn't sure he'd make it. If it had been Bourne, I'd have said, "forget it, he's got this one". Here though, there's something much more human about it. I thought it worked.

Everyone else did very well I thought, but one guy I will give special mention to is Jason Isaacs. He was great. I know I comment on accents a lot but his American accent has come by leaps and bounds since the last time I saw him. As crazy as this sounds to me the last time I saw Isaacs might have been in "Black Hawk Down". While he did wonderfully in that film as well, there were some clear accent slips I heard. With this latest American soldier performance, I thought he was spot on the whole time.

Alright, above I mentioned that ultimately I would find this film forgettable. Sure time will tell, but I stand by the statement for now. Without going into too much detail, here's why I'm making the prediction. The ending. It left me wanting a lot more. I was quite unsatisfied. I was left in a kind of, "that's it?" state, and I don't enjoy that feeling. So, if you're into Matt Damon, and Paul Greengrass' style give this a watch. It's not without its problems but it is not exactly time wasted either.