What I’m Watching – Green Zone

I like Paul Greengrass. He did the Bourne movies, and while they were pale imitations of what the books had on offer, they were still very well done.

I like Matt Damon. Sure I thought The Talented Mr. Ripley was a long and boring tale, but aside from that the guy is goddamn gold.

I hoped this would be an interesting movie. Instead, I got something possessing all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer shot to the face. Whoever wrote this script needs work on the basics in the worst way possible. The entire thing was a predictable story filled with predictable archetype characters. Very disappointing story.

And it’s too bad, because clearly some money was spent to make this work. The back third is actually going in a good direction. Greengrass is awesome at filming action sequences, and there’s a great one. Then it ends with a somewhat easy to see finish and an Iraqi character spouting the line “It is not for you to decide what happens here.” Subtle, writers! Subtle!

And then the final sequence, where the soldier confronts the Greg Kinnear Paul Bremer character is just over the top ham fisted writing at it’s worst. The script consistently lets down the performances, which are actually pretty decent.

Couple this with Crysis, and it has not been a good entertainment weekend for me.