Green Zone: a surfeit of sincerity

Green Zone (2010)
Director: Paul Greengrass
Entertainment grade: B+
History grade: B–

In 2003, the United States and Britain insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The alleged existence of these was the principal justification given for the invasion of Iraq. It was later found that intelligence about an Iraqi WMD programme was faulty.

Research

The film claims to be "inspired by" Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which documented life in the Green Zone, the American enclave in the centre of Baghdad. The accurate depictions of Americans at play in Saddam's Republican Palace, splashing around in the pool and drinking imported beer, are drawn from the book. The character of Ahmed Zubaidi, a returning political exile and Pentagon pet, is a barely fictionalised version of Ahmed Chalabi, whom Chandrasekaran described as "the neocons' dream candidate to rule after Saddam was toppled". But Chandrasekaran's book is not about WMD. For its main plot, the film veers away from his reporting and into less well-charted territory.

People

The movie's lead, Roy Miller (Matt Damon), is based on former American soldier Richard L "Monty" Gonzales, who served as a military adviser on the set. When Green Zone came out, it was accused of fuelling "conspiracy theories" – specifically, that the American government, intelligence services and/or military lied about WMD. Gonzales wrote a piece for Fox News criticising the movie on that point, and stating: "I would be appalled if filmgoers thought that it was anything other than fiction." He may have spoken too soon. Since then, more evidence has emerged to strengthen those supposed "conspiracy theories".

Conspiracy

In Green Zone, devious Pentagon suit Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) fabricates evidence for the existence of a WMD programme by means of an Iraqi source codenamed Magellan. Magellan is based on "Curveball", the main source cited by the CIA and the Pentagon as saying that Saddam had a biological weapons programme. In February 2011, 11 months after Green Zone's release, Curveball – real name Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi – admitted that he had made his story up. Furthermore, he said, German intelligence found out he was lying in 2000 – three years before the invasion of Iraq. Former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer then weighed in, claiming the German secret service had told the CIA Curveball was unreliable well before the invasion. Doubtless much more went on behind the scenes than historians and journalists yet know. At the very least, though, Curveball's case demonstrates that far too few questions were asked at every point in the chain of command about the validity of the case for war. While this does not, as in Green Zone, mean that intelligence was deliberately falsified, it does raise the question of whether officials at perhaps more than one level may have been so determined to invade Iraq that they "sexed up" a piece of evidence they knew to be dubious – behaviour that might be considered little better than making it up altogether.

Politics

"Most of all – this is the core of it really – it was a film made out of my sense of affront and anger", director Paul Greengrass told the Guardian. "I wanted to say: 'I know what you did.' And that statement has immeasurably more power if it's made to a broad audience in the vernacular of popular genre cinema." But the power of Greengrass's convictions almost overpowers his plot. The characters are all one-note: righteous Miller is righteous, his desperate Iraqi aide is desperate, and evil Pentagon dude is evil, posing occasionally in front of Bush/Cheney election posters to polish his pointy devil horns. It's a nifty idea to tell the WMD story as an action movie, and Greengrass's undoubted skill as a director makes it a perfectly watchable one. Even so, a few more shades of grey would have made it both more realistic and more interesting.

Verdict

Green Zone is a slick, smart thriller, let down slightly by its earnestness – but its historical slant, though fictionalised, has become more credible since its release.