Green Zone

Green Zone - subtitles written by goons.

I caught up with Green Zone this weekend; it's a film that I've been meaning to watch for a while, as it was directed by Paul Greengrass and stars Matt Damon. It's set in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Iraq in the second Gulf War and explores the murky politics that made the cause for war, including the falsification of the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

The story follows the NCO lead of a team sent to find WMDs, Chief Warrant Officer Miller (Damon) as he gets increasingly frustrated at all the WMD sites his team are sent to being empty of weapons or evidence, despite the information supposedly being confirmed by a source.

He stumbles upon evidence that the US Administration may have falsified the claims for WMDs and becomes drawn into a rivalry between the CIA and White House teams. Miller is horrified that they may have gone to war on a lie; the CIA operative he is linked to is more concerned that if the Army and Police are disbanded, the country will explode into civil war. The search is on for the source who supposedly corroborated the presence of WMDs.

It's well shot, taught and energetic, and sympathetic to the Iraqi people.

I was frustrated by the subtitles though; they refer to the Iraqi soldiers (dressed as civilians) who are defending the senior Iraqi Army officers as 'goons'. Completely the wrong word to use when the film is trying to be sympathetic to a people whose country has been invaded on a lie.

Overall, a good film. It's on Netflix at the time of writing.

27 October 2019