Movie Review: Green Zone

Get out your tinfoil hats, people. It's time to play conspiracy games.

The new film "Green Zone," starring Matt Damon, takes us back to the first days of the US invasion of Iraq, often referred to as "shock and awe," and to that age-old question, "Why didn't we find any weapons of mass destruction?"

Matt Damon is Roy Miller, the leader of a team of crack soldiers trained to isolate, recover, and control weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). As the initial chaotic wave of fighting unfolds in Baghdad, his team rolls into a site to discover....bupkis. Nada. Zilch.

No WMDs. Just lots of pigeon droppings.

This annoys him.

Miller suspects that someone is feeding him false information, indeed, feeding the entire Army, press corps, and American people false information.

Of course, he's right. I won't say who it is, but his name rhymes with "Tush" and means shrubbery. Or rather, some guy who works for him. Someone who wanted to go to war in Iraq so badly that he generated completely false intelligence, desseminated it, and has crack teams of Special Ops forces willing to murder to protect it.

And then the aliens descend from space and explain how they've been controlling Dick Cheney's mind.

No. Of course not. that would be silly.

Instead, Miller teams up with an Freddie (Khalid Abdalla), an Iraqi civilian, to find the truth about WMDs and expose the cover-up. An Iraqi Baathist general knows the truth, so he must be found. This requires several gun battles, with poor Miller being shot at by all sides, including by that pesky Special Ops team.

As a film, the movie has some tight and gripping moments. Damon, as always, is entirely believable as the solid, good, all-American. You're just sure he's got a golden-haired gal waiting for him back home on the farm.

It does suffer from a systemic lack of tension. The viewer knows from the beginning that no WMDs will be found. One also knows from pretty much the beginning who is lying. This begs the question, as Miller is ducking through Baghdad alleys, miraculously avoiding the bullets flying around him although he'd neglected to wear a combat helmet, what does he hope to accomplish? The most he can hope for is some sort of exposure of truth, because without a time machine, he can't stop the war from starting.

Time machine. Hmm... Maybe THAT's how Bush started the Crimean War. It explains so much.

For the most part, the Baathists are kind, nice, Baathists. With families. And puppies.They just want to bring stability to their country. They're portrayed more as reasonable military leaders than as ruthless thugs. 

This film will appeal to people who hold Bush responsible for everything from masterminding 9/11 to their grandmother's halitosis. It offers up a neat, easy explanation for why we did not find WMDs in Iraq. If only reality were so simple.

For the rest of us, this is another in a long line of movies that lectures the American public about the Iraq war. The checklist is all there. Gentle Iraqis being harassed and arrested for no reason. Check. Torture of an innocent person. Check. Menacing dogs and black hoods. Check. Chaos and deprivation in Baghdad after the invasion. Check. The feeling that Iraq was better off before the war. Check.

There is no mention in this film whatsoever of 9/11. Nor of Saddam's refusal to let international inspectors do their jobs and look for WMDs in the months leading up to the war. Nor of the atrocities and horrors that Saddam and his Baathist buddies visited on the country. One suspects the script was written back before the election, when the eventual stability of Iraq was stil in doubt. There are all sorts of lines about democracy-building or peace in Iraq that don't seem as ironic as they were probably intended, now that the country has stabilized.

Real history is just so messy.

It's no secret that there were mistakes leading up to the war and in the execution of the war. The shame in this movie, however, is the fantasmic rewriting of history that will lodge in some willing brains as evidence that a conspiracy occurred.

I'm off to buy stock in tin foil.