Wow, I suck. Its been over two months since I last posted. In the meantime the Oscars were televised, as well as several other lesser awards shows. I began typing up a blog entry with my thoughts on this year's change from five nominees to ten nominees for the best picture Oscar in addition to my award picks for this year. Well, in the middle of typing that blog I accidentally deleted the whole thing and it auto-saved immediately after, so all my hard work was for naught. Oh, well.
I've seen quite a few movies in the last couple of months, several of which I wanted to write about but just couldn't force myself to. Among them, "Crazyheart", "An Education", and "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus". Since all of these films have been out for some time, I felt I would write about the most recent film I've seen in theaters, "Green Zone".
I didn't know a lot about the film before seeing it, except that it stars Matt Damon and was directed by Paul Greengrass who also directed Damon in the last two "Bourne" movies. The film takes place in Baghdad in 2003, in the early days of the current Iraq war. Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller who is in charge of a squad of soldiers who are looking for WMD's.
Miller and his men have been given intelligence leading them to many suspected WMD sites, but no weapons are found there. An Iraqi citizen named Freddie tells Miller and his men about a nearby meeting of several high ranking members of the Iraq Army. This leads to a series of events that finds Miller discovering secrets about the very reasons why the US military invaded Iraq. I'll say no more of the plot than that.
The supporting cast include Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, and the always dependable Brendan Gleason, who plays CIA agent, Martin Brown.
The film is very worth watching and is a definite improvement over the similar Leonardo Dicaprio/Russell Crowe film, "Body of Lies". Matt Damon gives an excellent performance as a soldier who just wants to know the truth about what he is fighting for. If you're in the mood for an intelligent action/war movie, then I would recommend "Green Zone."
