Jen got the hook-up for a free showing of this movie from the Producer's Guild of America. The screening was last Friday night at the WGA theatre in Beverly Hills and it was shown on 35mm. I'll just come right out and say it: This is a great movie. Much better than I thought it would be.
Green Zone takes place in 2003 in Iraq. The USA has just invaded, and Chief Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is in charge of a group of soldiers who have been dispatched to find weapons of mass destruction.
As we now know, there weren't any. This movie makes a point that a lot of soldiers fought and died to secure weapons that didn't exist from bad intelligence. Miller begins to question who's providing this intelligence and why this person should be trusted after providing three bogus locations.
As the picture goes on, Miller finds himself in the middle of a military campaign quickly going to hell as the U.S. government makes a series of pivotal mistakes that puts him in grave danger. This is a thriller with a lot of brains, and I was really impressed with how good the plot was. Honestly, I was expecting more of an action film.
That's not to say the flick is short on that. It starts off with a big battle, and ends in a chase scene that as good as I've ever seen at the movies. Add to the mix one brutal villain in the form of a Special Forces Op with a license to kill (Jason Isaacs), and this one's a winner.
Unfortunately, the film is seriously under-performing at the box office. It is being labeled as left-wing and Un-American . I say B.S. to that; putting our soldiers in harms way without reliable intelligence is Un-American. This film made valid points about those first days in Iraq, how we lacked a cynical press to cover it, and what the effects were on the ground troops who had to carry out dangerous missions based on "bad intelligence."
My rating: """"
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