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Green Zone

Flying Spaghetti Monster

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I just got back from this movie. It's been a long day and I am tired.

The film made two very good points (whether or not I personally agree with them is irrelevant).

1. The U.S government probably fabricated the WMD story in order to get us into Iraq to fight.

2. Insurgencies in Iraq might have been caused by the U.S.'s actions to disband the Ira military in defference to it's own.

These points, coupled with gritty, authentic war footage, seem poised to make this a decent, and, most of all, relevant war film.

I can say this from the bottom of my heart: this film sucks

As Plinkett would say: "If I wanted a message, I'd listen to my answering machin!"

A movie with a good message can't survive on its message alone. It has to be a good movie. There is not a good movie here. None of the characters acted like people here. All of them acted like vessels for Necessary Exposition(TM) or were meant to be carboards sympathetic oir carboard villains.

The worst casting choice was Matt Damon. He is like the ultimate soldier, and you get the impression that he could take on all of G.I. Joe and not break a sweat. Even when he is captured, you don't any sense that he is in danger. He is not dirty, and he doesn't seem concerned baout his fate. And because we know he is a big movie star, we know that nothing will happen to him. Him and the driector have worked together before, so it is clear that they are in this for a paycheck. And while the film has messages that might be important, the scriptwriters can't tell a "film story" you know, with real characters, plot developments, jeopardy, to save their lives. The female lead has eight lines of dialogue and comes across as a half-baked plot point. You never know anything about Damon's men, not even their names. I kept thinking that Damon's character was the same character as Josh Duhamal's character in Transofrmers, and I think ythat guy could have at least brought something more to the role than Damon did, even if all Duhamal did was play the same dude he did in Bay's film. Also, it's funny how the guy with the limp can walk fast enough to catch up to where the script needs him to be at the very end.

What a crappy movie.

one and a half perfect Damon faces.
 
I've heard that this bombed, which is unfortunately because I want to see more Damon/Greengrass projects. I'm a fan of the Bourne films and thought they could pretty much do movies together without being gimped by a particular brand/franchise.
 
I've heard that this bombed, which is unfortunately because I want to see more Damon/Greengrass projects. I'm a fan of the Bourne films and thought they could pretty much do movies together without being gimped by a particular brand/franchise.

I'm a big fan of the Bourne movies and Greengrass as well, and I too would like to see more Greengrass/Damon collaborations in the future. I don't think one failure will be enough to hinder future projects from the duo, and if anything, Greengrass's next project will probably have a smaller budget and be more akin to Bloody Sunday and/or United 93. Either way, I'm going to see Green Zone tonight and I'm looking forward to it.
 
1. The U.S government probably fabricated the WMD story in order to get us into Iraq to fight.
Maybe. Not sure the Bushies have the brains/competence to pull that off. I'm still going with at least 60% stupidity.

2. Insurgencies in Iraq might have been caused by the U.S.'s actions to disband the Ira military in defference to it's own.
Nah. Iraqi sectarian divisions go way back. They have more than enough motivation to kill each other.

I remember saying as much right here on TrekBBS before the invasion: the whole place was primed to blow up like the Balkans because the conditions were very similar. Removing Saddam is like the fall of Tito - once the strongman is gone, the hatreds he was suppressing would explode. No US policy post-invasion would have changed that. I'm not sure that much could have been done to even mitigate it. If people want to kill each other, it's hard to stop them.
 
Some movie critic on CNN said the movie simplified the real story to one guy in a suit being behind the whole thing and only one soldier can stop him.
 
Some movie critic on CNN said the movie simplified the real story to one guy in a suit being behind the whole thing and only one soldier can stop him.

It's a movie. It's fictitious. So of course it's going to simplify things. As Roger Ebert said, it's a thriller, and not a documentary.
 
Hollywood keeps trying to have a message in their Iraq war movies, which being Hollywood almost always leans left politically. And it makes for extremely boring movies. I liked bits and pieces of Lions for Lambs, and the Hurt Locker was largely politically neutral. Yet they and the rest of their kin have largely bombed at the box office due to Hollywood trying to make them message movies.

Give us well produced films about the Baghdad Thunder Runs or Afghanistan's Lone Survivor, which have strong narrative potential and those movies will be box office monsters.

As to the Green Zone, I'll pass until it comes out on DVD, the story is telling us things that have been discussed and rehashed for years. At least come up with some original arguments to mix with the shaky cam.
 
Some movie critic on CNN said the movie simplified the real story to one guy in a suit being behind the whole thing and only one soldier can stop him.

It's a movie. It's fictitious. So of course it's going to simplify things. As Roger Ebert said, it's a thriller, and not a documentary.

I believe I'd read somewhere that the movie was based on a book, and only part of the book at that. Maybe they thought they could save other parts of it for a second movie?
 
As Roger Ebert said, it's a thriller, and not a documentary.

thriller is too strong a word. It's hardly thrilling whne the you know the hero is in no danger, and despite all the chaos, he acts like he is no danger at all.

Greengrass has to stop working with Damon and hack screenwriters. I know he can turn out a good film, because I thought United 93 was amazing.
 
I've heard that this bombed, which is unfortunately because I want to see more Damon/Greengrass projects. I'm a fan of the Bourne films and thought they could pretty much do movies together without being gimped by a particular brand/franchise.

I'm a big fan of the Bourne movies and Greengrass as well, and I too would like to see more Greengrass/Damon collaborations in the future. I don't think one failure will be enough to hinder future projects from the duo, and if anything, Greengrass's next project will probably have a smaller budget and be more akin to Bloody Sunday and/or United 93. Either way, I'm going to see Green Zone tonight and I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, something much smaller scale would work great with his particular style of filmmaking. It's just a question of whether Damon would get on board.

But it looks like the movie bombed HARD. I just hope he's able to get work of any kind at this point.
 
Hollywood keeps trying to have a message in their Iraq war movies, which being Hollywood almost always leans left politically. And it makes for extremely boring movies. I liked bits and pieces of Lions for Lambs, and the Hurt Locker was largely politically neutral. Yet they and the rest of their kin have largely bombed at the box office due to Hollywood trying to make them message movies.

I have to agree. I was disappointed by Green Zone. It was a fun thriller, but it was so heavy-handed in its political agenda it was just off-putting. Even as someone who is generally apolitical, and a big fan of Paul Greengrass, it was annoying to see a film push such a one-sided point-of-view.

The Hurt Locker, comparatively speaking, was much better: it wasn't concerned about politics, as you say, but was more concerned about just telling a damn good story.

I really wanted to like Green Zone. I love Paul Greengrass (United 93 is one of my favorite movies of all time), I love Matt Damon, and I love these type of films. But what made United 93 so damn good was because it wasn't concerned about telling a conspiracy thriller about 9/11, it was basically a retelling of the tragic event that occurred and the passengers' heroic plight to save their lives. Green Zone, on the other hand, has none of that subtle minimalism that made United 93 so great. However, John Powell delivered (once more) a fantastic score, and the first act was damn compelling storytelling.
 
I don't even know why they two are being compared, but The Hurt Locker didn't try to tell a story nor was it a character piece. It was an empty war film that was so apolitical as to render the Iraq war simply a series of set pieces that were high tension and exciting.

I'm not saying that's good or bad, but they are completely different experiences.

Besides, everyone should just watch/read Generation Kill and leave it at that. :lol:
 
I don't even know why they two are being compared, but The Hurt Locker didn't try to tell a story nor was it a character piece. It was an empty war film that was so apolitical as to render the Iraq war simply a series of set pieces that were high tension and exciting.

The Hurt Locker was a character piece and it did tell a story. The story can be summarized by the opening line in the film -- "war is a drug". It tells the story of how war affects the people involved, told from the very perspective of soldiers risking their lives every single day.

It explored the very depths of the three main characters very intricately and expansively. You felt like those characters were real, genuine, authentic human beings, whereas the characters in Green Zone were either plot devices or barely developed.

I agree that the plot structure was mostly episodic, but I think it worked since in order to understand the strain and emotional weight those events had on the characters, you had to see them going through it again and again. It was a highly affecting experience in my opinion and there were some really gripping, emotionally taut moments.

Comparatively speaking, both films deal with the Iraqi war but both deal with it in two very different ways. The Hurt Locker is a more personalized take on how the war has had residual effects on individuals (you can pretty much take out the fact that it takes place during the Iraqi war and substitute mostly any modern war, however there's an immediacy and currency to The Hurt Locker that relies on the modern setting). Whereas Green Zone was a very politically driven film about why we got into the Iraqi war; it would have been more poignant and compelling had it just focused on why we go into war in the first place, but it was trying to be timely and relevant (just like Hurt Locker) but it failed.
 
Which is why I'd recommend Generation Kill, since it is basically the best of both worlds.

To me, The Hurt Locker just doesn't hold up on second viewings. The action scenes are immediately boring and the terse attempts at trying to develop the characters (you're either addicted to war or afraid of dying) are rather silly.
 
Which is why I'd recommend Generation Kill, since it is basically the best of both worlds.

You're not the first to recommend this so I will indeed have to check it out.

To me, The Hurt Locker just doesn't hold up on second viewings. The action scenes are immediately boring and the terse attempts at trying to develop the characters (you're either addicted to war or afraid of dying) are rather silly.

Fair enough.
 
Yeah, I mean, I rewatched it right after the Oscar win and if you skip the set pieces, there isn't much there.

(Of course, there are the strange anachronisms - someone pointed out that the dude was playing an Xbox 360 with Gears of War 2, which came out in 2008, and that the movie is supposed to be set in 2004... which just ruined the whole thing for me. :p )
 
There are a lot of ananchronisms in The Hurt Locker. And a lot of innacuracies. I wonder why it was even set in 2004 at all, actually. Unlike Green Zone, it wasn't dependent on being a period piece.
 
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