RUTHERFORD AT THE MOVIES: 'Green Zone'
A Gaze into the WMD Cover Up That No One Challenged
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Entertainment Editor
Why did we go to war with Iraq?
If you elevate “Green Zone” to a level implied by its producers, the Matt Damon flick flatly places a known jackal in a position of trust. Unlike “All the President’s Men,” where reporters seek credible evidence to affirmatively link the White House the cloistered post 9/11 secretive atmosphere that stressed near unfettered trust of administration sources
That fundamental attitude adjustment on the correctness of challenging reputable sources ahead of the curve postulates that hard ball weapons of mass destruction intelligence question by members of the press could have short circuited the US shock and awe entry into Iraq.
Matt Damon (Roy Miller) plays a mid-level chief warrant officer/ commander in the first months after the war. He’s grown increasingly frustrated by empty secret locations where biological and chemical weapons were supposed to have been found. As his mission grows more exasperating , he grasps two competing sources of intelligence within U.S. government representatives stationed in Iraq --- one as confounded as he is; another too content with “finding nothing” and pivoting for more manipulations.
Dragging viewers through darkened unknown streets where flicks of lights are accompanied by automatic weapons fire, an Iraqi national (Khalid Abdalla) wanting the best for his country volunteers to help the Americans, and a burned Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) intentionally lets it slip that the WMD intelligence came from a Jordanian operative known as Magellan.
As artillery fire accents the disingenuous allusions of new world order agendas, each of these three feel more and more duped by high administration officials. But, “Green Zone” resolves to strongly infer the WMD as a deception to gain shock and awe approvals without shifting its cameras to the homeland. Instead, the perspective remains that of soldiers (and others) sweating in the blowing sand and wincing through blasted concrete cities.
Shots of burnt buildings and dangling infrastructure could be straight from World War II Berlin, but, the viewer here cannot help asking, did this all have to occur just so the President could take out Saddam?
Director Paul (“The Bourne Ultimatum”, “United 93”) Greengrass relies more on visual discrepancies to batter the viewer with the war pretext theory. His tact for wonderfully convoluted foreign intrigue rests on the lips of the intentionally blundering ‘don’t worry about’ the lack of WMD official perpetrators.
You will not leave the theatre without at least contemplating the shattering of all Presidential confidence in the previous administration. However, this is Hollywood; they do not normally cater to any politician (for long). At least, the West Coast cinematic industry has FINALLY (too late) rediscovered its mojo and started the process of pumping out (hopefully) more and more films that challenge the ‘status quo’ that even the mainstream press was once to shocked, to believing, and to scared to query fearing a non-politically correct brand of unpatriotic upon all their corporate efforts.