Green Zone

Comparer avec les films de Bourne ne serait pas digne. Admettons donc que Zone verte n'a pas leur dynamisme divertissant, n'a pas de musique captivante, se déroule du début à la fin comme sur un chantier sombre et ne nous dit rien sur ses personnages. Il est plus approprié de la comparer à Body of Lies de Scott, qui est thématiquement apparenté, et auquel j'ai donné trois étoiles et qui m'a plus amusé. Zone verte n'est qu'un exercice militaire en noir et blanc, un style de réalisation qui a déjà été appliqué ailleurs avec plus de succès et de couleur. (11/06/2010)

A politically engaged Bourne in Iraq? I’d like to use a line from the movie “don’t be naive", but that wouldn’t be altogether true. As a comparison it rather fits. A lot. A shame about the last third of the movie, however, when it turns off the hitherto path of the story down over-simplified and naively presented political agitation, aimed in the right direction, but the delivery... (especially the last dialog between Miller and Poundstone is just beyond the pale; I would never have expected anything like that from Greengrass). P.S.: Although I understand that a book in newspaper article form which is a bureaucratic odyssey where the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing, or: “How the Yanks failed to understand that an Arab land after years of tyranny, sanctions and war is not the same as any State of the Union following a natural disaster" is darn hard to turn into a non-documentary movie, but why on earth make a movie about weapons of mass destruction or botched attempts at finding them if there is no mention of either in the book? (27/05/2010)

A word that is often used in connection with cinema is "disappointment." I think I know why, but I’m not going to share it. Fears that Greengrass and Damon would merely swap running around the world's capitals for the dusty roads of Iraq have not come to fruition. Leaning on one spectacular screw-up by the Bush administration and Helgeland's script, they’ve created a compelling, rather conversational thriller that is given momentum by the restless cinematography and Powell's pulsating score. Expecting an action geyser is not worth it because Green Zone is, despite all the impressive set design, a rather modest film with no ambition to entertain, and yet is not at all afraid to point fingers at specific people. It’s based on the lesson that was the motto of a certain spirits advertisement: "There’s always a reason." (10/06/2010)

The film consists of very disturbing moral implications of the war in Iraq on the basis of a rather interesting thriller, which takes advantage of all the qualities from Greengrass's tested abilities to set a hard pace. The wooden acting of Damon is just the tip of the iceberg of missed opportunities and issues that could and should have gone much deeper - to his detriment, Greengrass tried to find a gap between the non-participation and rawness of United 93 and Jason Bourne. Green Zone is not nearly as impressive as the former and not nearly as fun as the latter. It’s simply...green. (15/06/2010)

Technically speaking, it’s a flawless political-military thriller (not combat action), but to me it’s the weakest viewer experience that I’ve ever had with Greengrass. I get what Green Zone probably wants to say, but I believe they could have got more out of the premise. Given the level of the game the creators are playing, I can’t say the script is good enough – the deus ex machina character of Freddy is especially awful. But I’m not disappointed, because the genre (which I’m not a big fan of) didn’t lead me to expect much. (10/06/2010)