Green Zone: Movie Review

My lovely other half scored us a pair of free passes to a pre-screening of this Mat Damon movie, I liked the Bourne movies so figured what the heck...even if it was 35 miles away.

Overall if you just payed attention to the action is was an ok movie, definitely worth the price we paid for it. However while Hollywood didnt go too far out of its way to make the Regular Army look too bad, the only people depicted with any real honor were a single soldier, an old CIA operative and a woman reporter. The rest of the army were depicted with various subtle acts of savage treatment of peaceful well meaning Iraqi civilians who were only trying to help....or innocently standing around. Special Forces members however are depicted as unthinking amoral assassins that did the bidding of a civilian political appointee.

In the end this movie takes a handful of real events then ties it all together with a complete work of fiction to promote the message that Bush lied and that WMD were never actually an issue. It also promoted the idea that no other reason was involved in the second Iraqi war.

The movie ignores the little details like the Kurds in Norther Iraq who had WMD Chemical weapons used on them in the 1990s, and the fact that it was generally accepted by most western powers that there were WMD in Iraq and that there were Other reasons to go to war AND that Democrats in congress authorized the war......pretty lopsided story really.

Summation: If you are a hardcore lefty, you will like this. If you are a conspiracy nut who believes GWB manufactured the whole WMD issue out of nothing, this is a movie for you. If on the other hand you think that our Military is basically honorable, and that Special Forces units are more than lap dog assassins that work for political flunkies then skip the movie.

There was plenty to dislike about the Bush Administration, Hollywood doesn't need to manufacture fake issues.