Green Zone [Blu-ray]

Green Zone [Blu-ray]

Director: Paul Greengrass

Writers: Brian Helgeland, Rajiv Chandrasekaran (book)

Stars: Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs and Greg Kinnear

Extravaganza of high tech militarilism, politics, and art., March 20, 2010       

            Matt Damon surpassed his exceptional acting in the Informant and Invictus. The fast pace of the movie, the great depth and diversity of the culture and landscape of Iraq, the gigantic advances in military technology, and the politics of building a nation, all made every actor in the movie a big star. The movie maker capitalized on every second of the movie, by intense sound, rich and moving photos, and engaging dialogue. One side of the movie displays the exceptional might of the United States in going to far places, making enormous changes in the course of history of other people, and spreading its unique way of looking at things differently from the other superpowers. Iraq is a tough, tribal, and enormous place for any foreign power to even attempt to meddle with, a challenge that America took and triumphed. Another side shows the struggle of the locals for water, basic needs, and security, intermingling with a foreign army, armed to the teeth with steel, high tech equipments, and space-based fast and accurate communication and information resources. Of course the Green Zone with its lavish swimming pools and buildings was Saddam's making. The focus on the WMD and the attempt to capture one General, who could reveal the initial motive for going to war, was as poor of a choice as choosing Rugby, in Invictus, to show Nelson Mandell's new role after Apartheid. The irony is that both the collapse of apartheid and Saddam's tyranny, which represent the dawn of new era, were taken out of context in the film making arena. The Green Zone tried to emphasize the vanity of invading Iraq based on the bad intelligence on WMD. Even though the motive of the Iraq war will always remain a controversy, the fact that America was decisive to exercise its exceptional power in diverting the course of history will always embody the unique American identity of shaping the future of the human race. The movie would have been able to extend for another 6 hours or more and would never lose its appeal, especially if other views were balanced in the historical and political contest of the war. The trigger-happy atmosphere of soldiers making rules as they see fit and taking lives at random, and without recourse, will always inconvenience people on both sides. On the American and Western side, people might not gauge the brutality of a tyrant like Saddam when comparing the Military taking over the lives of the Iraqis. On the Eastern side, many would hold immeasurable contempt to the trespassing of a foreign army on their own cities and backyard in such vigilante - style. With the long and extended intoxication of the Old World with tyranny, complacency of the masses, and the contemporary crisis of spread of nuclear technology and explosive population overgrowth, the Green Zone could not undermine the positive and refreshing role of America in policing the Globe. The irony of the War, however, stems from the lack of public sympathy with Bush's presidency, regardless of its overreaching and intrusive world policing that is impossible to measure within a short time scale.