Friday, December 9, 2011

Episode 78.5 - Green Zone Review 7/10

Green Zone - 2010 - Paul Greengrass

OK, so let’s get one thing straight, right quick, about Green Zone. It is NOT based on a true story. This story is fictional. It was inspired by a non-fiction book about the changing of power in Iraq’s political system, not about WMD. This movie WISHES it could be based on a true story. It definitely ACTS like it’s based on a true story and for that, this movie is dangerous; it’s the kind of anti-government, anti-bureaucracy propaganda that pushes off its ideas by making you think “yeah, I bet that COULD have happened.” News flash: It didn’t. Please remember that.

Disclaimer aside, Green Zone was actually a pretty entertaining movie with a fantastic plot minus a lot of “conveniences of inconvenience.” We know how much I love those things. Like a Michael Moore documentary, much of the intrigue and suspense and frustration with the turn of events of this movie come from the fact that you don’t have all the information; you are purposefully left without all of the information. It’s lost in system somewhere like a sock in the bureaucratic dryer.

Played by “poster child for American soldiers for some reason” Matt Damon, Roy Miller is in charge of the group playing “Where’s Weaponized Waldo” with Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Completing three raids in a row on abandoned warehouses that were allegedly home to weapon caches but instead filled with pigeon shit and broken dreams, Miller starts to question to source of the intelligence that is sending him around on a wild goose chase. In discovering more about the truth behind the source and the intelligence, he unravels a government conspiracy and yadda yadda yadda, you’ve seen this before.

I’ve never understood the appeal of anti-war messages shown through the stories of the brave men and women who fight for our country, perform some incredibly courageous and noble act or die honorably only so the movie can turn around, slap them in the face and say “but if our government weren’t so fucking sleazy, this wouldn’t have had to happen.” (See Every War/Anti-War Movie Released in 2007 and Beyond) Seems to be kind of a dick move if you ask me, and Green Zone REALLY pushes that to the limit to almost the point where it was offensive. I expect this kind of shit in 24 but to have a bunch of soldiers show up for no reason and with no explanation and take away your key witness just as you make a deal that would have ended the movie but instead want to showcase the flaws in our military system, that’s just uncalled for.

I’m sorry, I liked watching this movie. The action was really good. If it didn’t shove so much left-wing nonsense in your face, I could have easily fallen in love with the story, but I just can’t respect a movie like this. Even the characters looked shifty constantly asking “whose side are you on” which made me just want to punch them in the face and say “America’s side, dickbags. Whose side are YOU on?”

I’m complaining a lot about the story and the message here, but really, that’s why this movie was made. There’s no question. Like I said, it acts like it could have been based off a true story. Liberal activists will gleefully ignore the fact that it wasn’t and let it fuel their anger towards intelligence organizations while conservatives will dance in their underwear around a bonfire of Iraqi terrorist bodies singing “Burn, Baby Burn” and the brave soldiers will be left in the dust of the Middle East discussing amongst themselves whether or not they’re going to return home branded as heroes or as murderers. Let’s just not play this game anymore, shall we? We don’t need movies like this pretending like they are giving a fair perspective of this war just to confuse the masses that are having enough trouble debating what it means to be Red or Blue; I’d much prefer we cut the clutter and remember what it means to be Red, White AND Blue. There’s less hypocrisy and it lets me be proud of stories like Green Zone instead of immediately see it for the attack it is on the “evil organizations that are only looking to satisfy their own agendas," which nobody is willing to admit includes “not letting a single terrorist attack hit our states since 2001.”

Green Zone is getting 7 dustbusters out of 10 from me. It loses 3 for taking a great story and being a dick with it and having villain characters whose bastardisms have no logic behind them except to make you feel even more negatively towards those people who are organizing things out there.

I anxiously await the days when we take pride in what we actually have accomplished here, but that will have to wait for a decade or so when these moments are remembered in middle school American History classes as “the final unit before the end of the school year,” granted the teacher doesn’t spend so much time on other iconic wars (like the one where we killed each other for equality or the one that ended with us blowing up a ton of Japanese people in the original “Shock and Awe Campaign”) that there just isn’t enough time to really get through these chapters in the textbook.

Oh well, so sad, just pop on a movie instead to wrap up the school year quietly. You’ll want a cartoon, right? Might I recommend Grave of the Fireflies?


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