Posts tagged William Meredith
“Green Zone” Simple Story with Complex Overtones
Mar 18th
Simple Story with Complex Overtones
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
GREEN ZONE is the third collaboration of director Paul Greengrass and actor Matt Damon, the first two being the 2004 THE BOURNE SUPREMACY and the 2007 THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, and as TIME magazine put it, this movie essentially parachutes “their franchise’s hero, Jason Bourne, into the toxic reality of Iraq.”
This time, however, Damon plays U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, and his assignment right after the war in Iraq began is to lead his team of soldiers to find the weapons of mass destruction that were the cause of the war in the first place.
So, we see Chief Miller and his team roll up to a site in Baghdad that is a disaster, full of Iraqi looters and even an Iraqi sniper in the area.
Miller finds the U.S. officer in charge and tells him, “Intel says we’ve got live chemical agents in this site!”
After they take out the sniper, they go into the building and find . . . nothing. No chemical agents, no weapons of mass destruction, nothing, nada, zip, zilch!
This is not the first time, either. Chief Miller and his team hit another site the week before that was supposedly based on good intelligence, but the site turned out to be nothing more than a toilet factory.
Then we meet Clark Poundstone, played by Greg Kinnear. Poundstone is from Pentagon Special Intelligence, and he swears by the intelligence they have been receiving from an Iraqi source with the code name “Magellan.”
In the meantime, Miller encounters an Iraqi civilian who tells him about a private meeting taking place with high-value Iraqis. They call the man “Freddy,” and he leads them to the house where, sure enough, one of Saddam Hussein’s high-level generals, named Al-Rawi, is at the meeting, but he escapes after a firefight.
At this point other American troops come onto the scene, and a fight breaks out between them and Miller’s team over a black book that was obtained at the house.
There is the suspicion that General Al-Rawi is actually Magellan and was intentionally feeding the Americans false information, which Poundstone might even have known was false.
At this point, the movie turns into one long complicated chase that is awfully confusing about who is who and what is going on.
GREEN ZONE is a simple story with complex overtones.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Green Zone – Movie Trailer
Mar 17th
United 93 director Paul Greengrass explores the aftermath of the Iraq invasion in this feature adaptation of author Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s literary expose Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. A onetime Baghdad bureau chief of the Washington Post, Chandrasekaran was present as American forces attempted to set up a provisional government on the grounds surrounding former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s opulent palace. The resulting governing body, according to critics, existed in a bubble so far-removed from the grim realities of the Iraq War that it failed to properly assess the needs of the people. In this fictional thriller set during the U.S.-led occupation of Baghdad, director Greengrass and screenwriter Brian Helgeland use Chandrasekaran’s journalistic account as the foundation for the story of an officer who joins forces with a senior CIA officer to unearth evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is certain that Hussein has been stockpiling WMDs in the Iraqi desert, but in their race from one empty site to the next, they soon stumble across evidence of an elaborate cover up. As a result, Miller realizes that operatives on both sides of the conflict are attempting to spin the story in their favor. Now, as Miller searches for answers made ever more elusive by covert and faulty intelligence, the truth becomes the most valuable weapon of all. Will those answers prove pivotal in clearing a rogue regime, or escalate the war in a region that grows increasingly unstable with each passing day? Amy Ryan co-stars as the New York Times foreign correspondent who travels to Iraq investigating the U.S. government’s allegations about weapons of mass destruction, with Greg Kinnear appearing in the role of an additional CIA officer, and Antoni Corone essaying the role of a colonel. Brendan Gleeson rounds out the main cast for this Universal Pictures production.
“Body of Lies” Interesting, but Not Engaging
Oct 16th
Interesting, but Not Engaging
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
BODY OF LIES is a modern-day spy thriller set in the Middle East that holds your attention while you are watching it, but after it is over, you might feel unsatisfied.
The fourth collaboration between Russell Crowe and director Ridley Scott, the film also stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a CIA agent on the ground who is in almost constant cell-phone communication with Crowe, his handler back in the United States.
In fact, Crowe’s Ed Hoffman can even be directing DiCaprio’s Roger Ferris while Hoffman is at home guiding his young son to the bathroom or at one of his children’s soccer games.
And even when Hoffman is at CIA headquarters, the satellite technology is so sophisticated that he can watch Ferris while Ferris is driving out in the desert or even running through crowded streets.
Their main objective is to catch Al-Saleem, an Islamic terrorist mastermind behind two massive suicide bombings in Europe. To this end, Ferris concocts a complicated scheme to make an innocent man look as if he is another terrorist mastermind competing with Al-Saleem, in order to draw Al-Saleem out into the open.
As part of the plan, Ferris needs the cooperation of a man named Hani, who is the head of Jordan’s covert operations and who tells Ferris his one
rule: that Ferris must never lie to him.
Hoffman, however, tells Ferris, “You cannot trust Hani. Am I clear?”
Now, the film seems to be a training manual for terrorists in showing just how certain operations can be accomplished, such as how to get one man into one automobile out in the desert without revealing to an overhead satellite which automobile he is in.
The film also shows warfare at its best. Or should that be at its worst?
After a while, however, we might find ourselves asking do we really care what happens any more?
The theme could be described as “Nobody is innocent,” but there seems to be too many similarities to too many other recent films, some better and some not as good, but is that the fault of this film or the fault of the novel on which it is based?
Even a semblance of a love story seems to be generic and just plopped down into the plot.
BODY OF LIES is interesting to watch, but not very engaging.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
