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Green Zone is the rare miss from frequent collaborators Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass.
It's one thing for the filmmakers to (sort of) fictionalize real people, but Green Zone wraps up with a wish-fulfillment fantasy that is about as believable as watching reinforcements riding in to save Custer.
Reduces policies that caused the deaths of thousands to the equivalent of a first-person-shooter video game.
Green Zone hits hard and doesn't forgive. It plays out like fiction, and in some ways it is. But in too many ways, it's not.
When Mr. Greengrass made United 93, his 2006 reconstruction of one of the Sept. 11 hijackings, some people fretted that it was too soon. My own response to Green Zone is almost exactly the opposite: it's about time.
Damon's the anchor, a fine one at that, but even he can't seem to hold the filmmakers' attention for long.
A reasonably gripping entertainment.
The story of the Iraq War is fascinating, but the checklist of talking points is not.
It's like Inglourious Basterds but without the fun.
Greengrass' Green Zone is about half political thriller and half action thriller and unfortunately it's only successful at one of those halves. Doubly unfortunate, the half that does work isn't the part he's interested in.
As a politically-charged action film, it accomplishes the mission.
Como película de acción funciona a medias; es ágil y por momentos tensa, pero no propone nada novedoso y en varios momentos no resulta convincente. Lo interesante es que se ubica en un lugar inusualmente crítico para la industria de Hollywood.
The characters are broad and poorly defined perhaps, but this film should be admired for its desire to bring the US government's deceit to light in a stridently populist manner.
An angry, critical movie, but in the name of accessibility it foregoes complexity and depth in a subject that requires it.
I'd likely be damning Green Zone for facile political messages if it weren't for the fact that more than a fair share of people out there are in desperate need of them.
...there's a lot to like in directorPaul Greengrass' fast-break freneticism and in the evocatively fictionalized Iraq war story told here. It's nothing we haven't heard before, but - for Hollywood, at least - it's nuanced and exciting storytelling.
Though based on a work of nonfiction and directed with a dirty, dusty realism, it's still more cynical Hollywood conspiracy thriller than political exposé...
It's as if Greengrass figured we already know the ending, so let's just have some fun chasing down bad guys. Which is no laughing matter, considering: 1.5 million dead Iraqis, over 31,000 US military deaths and 100,000 wounded, and 18 suicides per day.
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