Pick of the week: The greatest war film ever made?

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 00:30:00 +0000

Have things improved in Iraq and Afghanistan since we decided to gung-ho the hell over there and blow stuff up? Let's just say that expert opinion is divided on that question, but the movies have been amazing. You could curate a dynamite film festival out of post-9/11 war movies, both documentaries and narrative features, starting with Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein's prescient "Gunner Palace" -- made in 2004, just as the Iraq conflict was going seriously south -- and moving forward through "The Situation" and "Iraq in Fragments" and "Battle for Haditha" and, of course, "The Hurt Locker" and last year's Oscar-nominated, you-are-there documentary "Restrepo."

“Green Zone”: Matt Damon’s Iraq war thriller

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:20:00 +0000

Early in "Green Zone," a fictional movie teased from the tangle of facts, almost-facts and squelched facts surrounding the search for weapons of mass destruction in the early days of the Iraq war, Matt Damon, as a soldier in charge of finding those WMD, has one line of dialogue that sums up the heartsickening reality of the whole enterprise. During a briefing in which a couple of higher-ups announce with bravado that someone they completely trust has told them exactly where the WMD are located, Damon's Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller speaks up with the demeanor of a polite schoolboy: "There's a problem with the intelligence, sir." Damon and his team have already checked out many of the sites at which those WMD were supposedly stashed and come up with zilch. (One of the alleged locations has turned out to be a toilet factory.) He's not being disrespectful; he's merely pointing out a fact.

Salon.com > Green Zone

Pick of the week: The greatest war film ever made?

“Green Zone”: Matt Damon’s Iraq war thriller