{"id":8226,"date":"2010-03-21T00:38:20","date_gmt":"2010-03-20T16:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/03\/21\/the-green-zone\/"},"modified":"2018-03-14T11:12:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T03:12:59","slug":"the-green-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2010\/03\/21\/the-green-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"The Green Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-gz1\" The Green Zone<\/a><\/em> \u2013 at AMK Hub (2010). Incredibly, we\u2019re already in the 11th week of the year and this is only the first theatrical film Ling and I have caught this year! We\u2019d originally intended to catch this show with Matt last week, but couldn\u2019t find the right opportunity to \u2013 so we caught it yesterday morning instead at AMK Hub.<\/p>\n

The film is an adaptation of a book titled Imperial Life in the Emerald City<\/em> and by Indian-American journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Within the film\u2019s fairly short run length of 115 minutes though, I wonder exactly how much of the material from that book actually got into the film. Briefly, The Green Zone relates the story of a Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) who leads his squad in Iraq 2003 searching for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and along the way finds himself in a web of conspiracy that threatens to reveal that one of the key reasons for George Bush Jr. waging Gulf War Part 2 was really just based on very, very bad intelligence \u2013 that there really wasn\u2019t any WMDs left in Iraq in 2003.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s context, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s surprising anymore that WMDs have still yet to be found in Iraq, and as the rumor mill goes, Saddam Hussein had them all destroyed in the 90s before George Bush Jr. came marching in with the Coalition of the Willing. But as I recall it, even in the year 2003 7 years ago, whether there were really WMDs or not was still quite nebulous. No one knew for certain, but the way the film tells its story suggests some minor face-rubbing with the benefit of hindsight: “See, there are no WMDs. Too bad it took you so long to believe us!”<\/p>\n

Now, whether that\u2019s true or not isn\u2019t the point I\u2019m trying to make. Rather, it\u2019s the not-too-subtle political preaching from the film that I found a little annoying. The Green Zone<\/em><\/strong> in my opinion benefits a little too much from the benefit of hindsight 7 years down the road, and for a retelling that purports to be \u2018in the current\u2019 in year 2003, it\u2019s really was rather jarring.<\/p>\n

Putting aside the film\u2019s premise and script, the rest of The Green Zone <\/em><\/strong>actually worked well. There\u2019re a couple of recognizable faces in the cast: Brendan Gleeson who plays a CIA bureau chief who has the same suspicions as Miller, Greg Kinnear who\u2019s the Bush administration\u2019s point man and film\u2019s antagonist, and Yigal Naor whom I saw playing the title character<\/a> of the TV mini-series House of Saddam <\/em><\/strong>last year,<\/em><\/strong> but here plays one of the late el Presidente\u2019s henchmen. Surprisingly, Jason Isaacs was unrecognizable as the Neutral Evil special ops officer but he has a pretty meaty role in the film\u2019s most dramatic action scenes. A special nod also goes to British actor Khalid Abdalla who plays an ex-Iraqi soldier turned informant, but who loves his country more than anything else. He gets some of the film\u2019s most thoughtful and certainly emotional moments.<\/p>\n

Visually, the movie\u2019s stunning: while filming was anywhere but in war-torn Iraq, there\u2019s a lot of scenes showing key locations of the country \u2013 including Saddam\u2019s palace and his monuments, and the airport named after him. Which leads me to wonder: how much of it was computer-generated, or real footage intermixed cleverly with the Morocco stand-in location shooting. The film is also relatively action and violence-lite for a war movie. There\u2019s plenty of characters running around, a few car sequences showing off production skills honed from the director Paul Greengrass\u2019s two Bourne<\/em><\/strong> films, a few very short firefights throughout, but is also book-ended by a superbly produced all-out urban street battle. Seems as though the director picked up cues from Ridley Scott\u2019s Black Hawk Down<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In all, I liked the show, putting aside its not subtle at all political suggestions. It also gets Ling\u2019s stamp of approval. Immediately after the film, she peppered me with questions on the story\u2019s authenticity and the background of the war.:)<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Green Zone \u2013 at AMK Hub (2010). Incredibly, we\u2019re already in the 11th week of the year and this is only the first theatrical film Ling and I have caught this year! We\u2019d originally intended to catch this show<\/p>\n

Read More The Green Zone<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","wpcat-10-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}