Bar Stool Review Of GREEN ZONE

From the juiced-box and the soundtrack: Moby - Alice

Ramblings: Zoned Out

Final Proof: 3 Shots

You know how you drink on meth? Sure, it sounds like a good idea at first 'cause you're gonna get the best of both, so you shoot or snort or whatever it is you do with meth and you pop open that beer tab or uncork the bottle of wine or unscrew the bottle of whiskey or saber that bottle of champagne (hey, i know what to do with booze but not meth, so sue me) and then, pretty much right from the get go you feel dizzy and shaky and you kinda wanna throw up and you pray for it all to stop and you want the clock to move backwards so you can either do the meth thing or the booze thing but it's too late so there's nothing left to do but ride it out and tattoo "Never Again" on your forearm so there's no chance in hell you'll try that crap another time. Yeah, it's kinda like that with Green Zone.

Paul Greengrass rocks. He is a killer director. United 93 is the absolute best movie ever made about the worst day in recent American memory. Like Bloody Sunday, Greengrass was able to make a movie so realistic about a historical incident that it looked like a documentary.

Greengrass also rocked the last two Bourne movies (The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum). Lots of style and suspense, the films raised the bar for action movies.

Unfortunately, Grass Is Greener tried to mix both of these types of movie into Green Zone and it turned out like the intro paragraph [Shout out to Brandi Alexandra for her help brainstorming the tack i took with that]. His pseudo-documentaries are like fine wines and his action films pack all the rush of crystal meth but when he mixes both of them, we're let down (and a little nauseous). Green Zone is black and white so it lacks the ambiguity of reality, but at the same time is based on a true story so there's a lot of backstory telling that detracts from the action and slows down the pace.

Yigal Naor as General Al Rawi

Khalid Abdalla as Freddy

So, with all this bitching and moaning, why did i give it 3 shots (besides the fact i'm a generous mother)? Lots of reasons. While i'm not a big fan of handcam's, and this is the first movie i ever really noticed how bad it can be (hell, i even liked it in Cloverfield), it did give the film a frenetic feel. Matt Damon did a solid job in the role of "Miller" but the exotic talent stole the show. Yigal Naor, an Israeli actor who actually played Saddam Hussein in The House Of Saddam, kicked ass as Iraqi General Al Rawi, aka The Jack Of Clubs. Another rockin' role was that of Freddy, as done by Khalid Abdalla (Egyptian descent, born in Glasgow, who also appeared as a terrorist in Greengrass' United 93). The story was good, the action was hot, the style was there, so there was a lot that entertained in this movie.

Amy Ryan as Lawrie Dayne, Now We're Talkin' Entertainment

Buzz Kills (Watch Out for Spoilers)

Sex: 1 Shot

Babes, we're talkin' about an Iraqi war movie: guys and guys and more guys than a frat house at a Jimmy Buffet kegger.

i'm considering myself lucky they decided to include Amy Ryan as Wall Street Journal journalist Lawrie Dayne. She's cute as a shotglass of Mike's Hard Lemonade but the closest we get to sexy is the shot i posted just above. Here's a collage of her other shots:

For those of you who prefer soldiers to journalists, i got some Matt Damon for you.

Drink: ½ Shot

A couple beer references. When soldiers visit the Republican Palace / Coalition Provisional Authority HQ, the grunts drool over the lucious things hanging out at the swimming pool, not to mention the beer and Domino's pizza. When they ask their commander if they can have a beer, they're told, "One".

There's also some beer at the hotel Lawrie's staying at.

Rock & Roll: 2 Shots

i'll give the rock 'n' roll attitude of this a couple shots, but don't go seeing this movie expecting to hear the kind of rock we got in The Hurt Locker.

Boring Technical Crap

Written by:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone)

Brian Helgeland (Screenplay)

Directed by: Paul Greengrass

Starring

Amy Ryan - Lawrie Dayne

Matt Damon - Miller

Khalid Abdalla - Freddy

Yigal Naor - General Al Rawi

Bottom Line

You should pro'lly wait for this to come out on DVD so the shaking camera thing on the big screen doesn't send you into epileptic seizures.

Bonus Round

Another still of Amy Ryan (and some guy):