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So, what are you going to see this weekend?
Green Zone — B-
Green Zone didn't screen in time for critics, but we sent Drew Lazor anyway:
Paul Greengrass' frenetic, Adderall-addled visual style isn't for everyone. But it works well in the context of Green Zone, screenwriter Brian Helgeland's fictional interpretation of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 2006 true-life take on the costly U.S. blunders that took place inside the violence-insulated Iraqi headquarters of our country's Coalition Provisional Authority. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon), jaded after coming up empty-handed in a series of WMD raids organized around supposedly air-tight intel, begins questioning the true purpose of his presence, only to be rebuked for falling out of lockstep with The Mission. He decides to check up on the source —an anonymous Iraqi insider named "Magellan" — on his own, and stirs up a hornet's nest of bureaucratic double-dealings, with Pentagon suit Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) and CIA firebrand Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) jockeying for his loyalty. (Amy Ryan, as a WaPo journalist following the same scent as Miller, is underused.) The movie is exhilarating as an action entry, but its leanings, however representative of stateside opposition to the conflict they may be, are childishly oversimplified — it places blame for the deaths of thousands on a single individual, when in reality thousands more are culpable. Damon's granite-chinned white knight may be the American all of us would like to see staring back at us when we look into a mirror, but Green Zone fails to portray war through the eyes of a soldier, since Damon's Miller is not a soldier but an ideologue.
Trailers for the other movies opening today after the jump.
Prodigal Sons — A
Red Riding: 1974 — B
Red Riding: 1980 — B+
Red Riding: 1983 — B
Remember Me — D+
RELATED >> Q&A with JAY BARUCHEL: "Because I have to look however someone wants me to look so friggin' often, I have to do these little measured acts of defiance."
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