Green Zone DVD

DVD Review by Kam Williams

Headline: DVD Features Damon in Iraq War Drama

President Bush’s pretext for declaring War on Iraq in 2003 was that Saddam Hussein was supposedly in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) which posed an imminent threat to the United States. Ultimately, however, neither the military nor the CIA was able to find any evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear stockpiles. Furthermore, the official report issued by the Iraq Survey Group concluded that none probably even existed at the time of the invasion.
So, who, besides perhaps Vice President Cheney, might find a movie recounting a unit’s frantic search for WMDs compelling, given that everybody already knows that it was a mere exercise in futility? That rather obvious fact didn’t discourage Paul Greengrass from shooting Green Zone, a patently-predictable affair posing as a political potboiler presuming to take its audience on a roller coaster ride
Since there’s no mystery about how the film is going to end, the director is desperate for ways to generate any sort of tension. So, he repeatedly resorts to the same infuriating cinematic device involving the use of a handheld camera as a means of manufacturing a false sense of urgency. Unfortunately, all he really manages to achieve is to make the viewer feel dizzy.
The film stars Matt Damon as Roy Miller, an Army Warrant Officer assigned to lead a team of soldiers dowsing the desert in quest of the fabled WMDs. Like a modern Captain Ahab, Miller gradually morphs into a madman so maniacally fixated on the mission he’s even willing to go rogue after it is readily apparent that the tips he’s been getting from a Pentagon Intelligence Officer (Greg Kinnear) by way of a gullible Wall Street Journal reporter (Amy Ryan) are bogus.
The only thing striking about Green Zone is how tame a backdrop it unfolds against. For Greengrass paints postwar Iraq as a relatively-calm environ virtually absent of improvised explosive devices, a resistance movement or suicide bombers. A fairy tale strictly for anyone still naïve enough to believe in Saddam’s mythical Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Fair (1 star)
Rated R for violence and profanity
In English and Iraqi with subtitles.
Running time: 115 Minutes
Distributor: Universal Studios Home Entertainment
DVD Extras: Deleted scenes, feature commentary with Matt Damon and the director, plus featurettes entitled, “Inside the Green Zone” and “Matt Damon: Ready for Action.”