Review of Green Zone (2010) by Chads — 16 Mar 2010

Stephen Glass, the reporter who fabricated articles for The New Republic, never killed anybody with his lies. He can be forgiven. "Hack Heaven" didn't result in wounded flesh and shattered bone.

In "The Green Zone", Amy Ryan portrays a Wall Street Journal reporter named Lawrie Dayne, who is obviously a stand-in for the New York Times journalist who sold the WMD story to the public. Disappointingly, the film goes easy on her, since Lawrie is depicted as a victim, a burned writer, misled by her fellow countrymen.

Clark Poundstone(Greg Kinnear), a Pentagon Special Intelligence agent, gives Lawrie the run-around on the airport tarmac when she requests a meeting with Magellan, Clark's informer. Thereafter, the naif scribe notices Warrant Officer Roy Miller(Matt Damon) talking to a senior CIA officer, and subsequently, in her hotel room, she admits to filing a story based on hearsay.

While the character of Roy Miller functions like Oliver Stone's take on New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in "J.F.K.", our anger towards Lawrie is tempered, because the filmmaker cushions the blow of her war propaganda by giving this opportunistic journalist, SOME scruples.

Across her visage, there's a look of humiliation while she relays her shaky reporting methods to the dumbfounded soldier. Lawrie was the government's tool, but she believed her story; believed in Clark.

He betrayed her trust. Although "The Green Zone" is a superior action film with camerawork that can only be described as virtuoistic(perhaps, genius), the story should be told through the reporter's eyes; a reporter who is the anti-Woodward, the anti-Bernstein.

"The Green Zone" may be a conspiracy movie, but the filmmaker doesn't go far enough. It's too fair, too balanced, since in all probability, the real-life Lawrie Dayne was "The President's Woman".

If moviegoerswants to see Matt Damon kick ass, they can watch any of the three Jason Bourne movies.