Green Zone Review: The (Temporary) Return of Action Movies For Adults

Rightfully or wrongfully (I say the latter), action movies are predominantly perceived as disposable entertainment and never art. Most are dismissed, and the highest praise even the most critically acclaimed films in the genre get is that they are well-crafted. When was the last time you heard someone talking about an action movie not only in terms of entertainment and aesthetics but also theme and point of view? When was the last time an action movie was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar (The Fugitive, 1994)?

Whenever action movies try to express a point of view and explore serious, weighty themes underneath the set pieces and stunts, critics tend to get their knickers all bunched up, indignant. How dare a popcorn movie have something to say? The Rambo series has been dumped on since its inception, and now Green Zone is getting a lot of similar treatment. The film reunites Matt Damon with Paul Greengrass, the talented craftsman of United 93 and the last two phenomenally successful Bourne movies. Those movies also had something to say, but they were packaged much more traditionally and the commentary was more submerged and ambiguous. Green Zone, on the other hand, is a more radical piece of film-making and is prompting a more extreme response.

Much like Rambo: First Blood Part II, tried to do with Vietnam, Green Zone tries to provide a sort of fantasy victory over Iraq and the cultural and historical forces which are beyond the power of the audience to control. Matt Damon plays CWO (Chief Warrant Officer) Roy Miller, a man tasked with finding WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) believed to be stockpiled in various Iraqi locations. When he and his team keep coming up empty—a scenario familiar to anyone who has read a newspaper in the last ten years—Miller goes “off the reservation” (yes, they actually use that line in the movie) to find out the truth. Rambo and Green Zone are very different films featuring very different stars, but they function in similar ways. They both employ intensely archetypal characters—the Hero, the Bureaucrat, the Shapeshifter, the Mentor—and provide a cathartic crystallization of a complex and damaging war. In this movie, Damon is the hero, Greg Kinnear is the slimy bureaucrat, Amy Ryan is the Shapeshifter, and Brendan Gleeson is the mentor. It’s a great group of actors and they are cast perfectly to fulfill these archetypal functions.

In his treatise Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America., cultural historian Richard Slotkin explains that when history is translated into myth, the complexities of social and historical experiences are simplified and compressed into the action of representative heroes.  These characters embody almost the full range of ideological contradictions around which the life of the culture revolves, and their adventures suggest the range of possible resolutions that the culture desires. Slotkin is right. That’s how movies like Green Zone and Rambo should be viewed: as an ideal outcome to an ambiguous, pernicious, culturally damaging war.

And on those terms, I thought Green Zone was a fresh, smartly-made, convincing action thriller. Damon brings a commanding credibility to his role that is invaluable. Many people will be tempted to look at this movie as basically Bourne 4, and that’s not unreasonable given the involvement of Damon and Greengrass and Universal’s Bourne-esque marketing campaign. But Miller is a different character than Bourne, and Damon does mostly succeed in differentiating the two. If anything, Roy Miller is the idealist that David Webb began as when he first signed up to become the assassin Jason Bourne.

As for the aesthetics, the production design is first-rate, and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd—who shot United 93 and The Hurt Locker—brings a tactile urgency and atmosphere to the film. Of course, Paul Greengrass employs the same shaky-cam camerawork that has become his trademark. But it has been so influential and become so pervasive now that it no longer seems fresh (look at Quantum of Solace, maybe the most geographically-fractured action movie ever made). Greengrass remains the shaky-cam savant though. If anyone is going to insist on using that style, it should be him. Some people really love it, some people hate it. I don’t like it because to me, it means that action and suspense—the visceral, gut-tightening tension any great action movie must produce in the viewer—is created through the rhythm of the editing instead of the action in the frame. It’s a much more manipulative, much more hyper-stylized aesthetic choice. It’s not my thing, but for what it is, it is done well in this case.

Some people will look at this film as an ill-advised exercise in simplification that weaves fact and speculation (or even downright fiction) together too freely. But this is a film made from a standpoint of risk-taking and intelligence, and given that the entire action genre has been watered-down by studios so that they can appeal to every possible demographic and make as much money as possible, the fact that Damon and Greengrass made an adult, R-rated action thriller is nothing short of laudable. If nothing else, Green Zone is an imperfect but provocative, commanding and enjoyable two hours at the movies. Then again, what would I know? Looking at the box office estimates, it seems that movie audiences still aren’t up for dealing with Iraq, Universal will lose a good deal of money, and soon we’ll be back in Transformers Land for good.

Photos taken by Jasin Boland  -  Courtesy Universal Studios