Dir: Paul Greengrass, France/USA/Spain/UK, 2010, 115 mins
Cast: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs
Review by Dave Hall
Fans of the Bourne trilogy, and in particular Supremacy and Ultimatum , won't be disappointed by this latest hell-for-leather action broadside from Greengrass. Despite appearances, it's not another Bourne sequel, though it does star the charismatic Damon; this time, he's decked out in US army fatigues, and is running around Iraq in the early weeks of the post-9/11 hostilities. Though you may find the film's political overtones a bit simplistic, this is definitely in the zone when it comes to adrenaline-fuelled rides.
Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) and his unit are tasked with securing sites believed to harbour WMDs. Repeatedly unable to find any weapons, Miller starts to question the intel that's sending him on what appear to be pointless missions, and stumbles on a conspiracy in which a smooth Pentagon neocon (Kinnear), an old school CIA Arabist (Gleeson) and a Wall Street Journal reporter (Ryan) all start pulling him in different directions. Soon, Miller has gone rogue, and is on the tail of a former Baathist General (Igal Naor) who holds the key to the WMD mystery; on the way, he locks horns with a special forces super-soldier (Isaacs, sporting a fearsome walrus moustache).
It's easy to be blasé about Greengrass's ability to stage action scenes, but here again he proves he's in a class of his own: sense-scrambling camera work and thunderous sound design combine to all but shake you up and down in your seat. Whether it's gunfights, close quarters combat or car and foot chases, you're right there, breathlessly trying to keep up.
The action barely abates, but when it does the film forgoes shaky cam for shaky ground. Kinnear's character might as well have Slimeball tattooed across his forehead so blatant is his double dealing and dissembling, and there can't be many films in which a hastily assembled press conference is intercut with a chase sequence in a clumsily edited attempt to fuse action and politics. Meanwhile, Ryan, as the world's least effective reporter, has little to do except represent the lapdog tendencies of the press (a little harsh, given the film was “inspired” by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book Imperial Life in the Emerald City , a multi-layered expose of the US occupation). Never mind All the President's Men , in the world according to Greengrass, a rogue soldier is the best way to get to the truth.
In fact, the film's political message is best symbolised by the Green Zone itself, the high security area in Baghdad where the US political and military machine is based, and which includes Saddam's former palace. There's plenty of mileage to be had in seeing the ruined splendour of the palace as a metaphor for where hubris can lead you; and the anarchy in the streets, where water and power has been cut off, is sharply contrasted with shots of American solders and staffers relaxing by the palace swimming pool and plugging in high-tech tracking and comms devices.
But the action is where this film's head is really at, and even if there's a sense that Greengrass is starting to revisit past glories, they're still well worth another breakneck flyby.
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