Sunday, December 19, 2010
EXCITING MESSAGE
Today's film was Paul Greengrass'
with Matt Damon, Brendan Gleeson and Greg Kinnear.
We are in Iraq just a month after the shock and awe invasion. The WMD's have not shown up, the looting is in high gear, Brimmer has just started taking over the government and the US puppet, Ahmed Chilabi, has just arrived after 30 years out of the country. Two hours later he is out of business. It took awhile in real life.
Damon is in a WMD search unit and isn't finding any because the intel is faulty. As it turns out, the intel is faked. Gleeson becomes his CIA ally and, together, they piece together the events that led up to the debacle. Here they are, plotting away.
This is a thriller wrapped around the facts of the matter and it is interesting to watch how the action shows the confusion, wrong thinking and outright mendacity of the people in the Green Zone. And the infighting.
It is very good.
We are treated, ironically, to a video in the cafeteria of Bush going on the carrier to announce "mission accomplished".
And all the while there is a tightly directed chase movie including a hair raising night time raid where we see just about as little as the participants.
If this was an attempt to get the true story out through the Trojan Horse of a war thriller, it succeeds admirably.
I liked the film a lot and was on pins and needles throughout.
I don't think that they missed a beat. There is a lot of show and tell here. The almost tropical paradise mood in the Green Zone. The crush of the press and the eye to eye enmity between bureaucrats.
This is a perfect role for Damon who has this earnestness. His discovery that they are fucking with him is devastating but rather than pack it up, he runs a counter offensive against the lies.
The ending would be a lot more satisfying if we didn't know that the war went on and on and now is winding down in another year. They want us out of there just as most of them did at the beginning.
One more thing. I love Brendan Gleeson and to watch him struggle with an American accent (he wins most of the time) is a sight to behold. He has the flat back of the throat thing down cold but every once in awhile a burr creeps in.
I wouldn't mind seeing this again at all. I will give it a 4 out of Netflix5.
