The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest [15]

Reviews of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire can be found HERE and HERE

DIR: Daniel Alfredson
CAST: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Annika Hallin,
Anders Ahlbom, Lena Endre, Micke Spreitz

And so the big movie event of the year (as Momentum and Yellow Bird have sold it) comes to a close, not with a bang but with a whimper, with a film so forgettable and inconsequential that it may as well be merely an expulsion of air. It’s a real shame, but I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Stieg Larsson’s final (completed) Millennium novel is a doorstop; a huge beast of a book filled with a rambling, ranty, mass of detail and freely mixing a little fact with increasingly outlandish fiction. It’s also incredibly static. On the page that’s not entirely ineffective; Lisbeth Salander (played again by the extraordinary Noomi Rapace), confined to a hospital bed, unable to do much of anything in her own cause (which, this time out, involves a trial for attempted murder that could see her committed), is a somewhat effective counterpoint to the fierce, active, character of the first two books. Unfortunately, translated to the screen, it’s often – like much of the rest of the book - just dull.

For what seems like an eternity (the cut down cinema release is 147 minutes long) nothing happens. Endless screen time is filled with Mikael Blomkvist’s meetings at Millennium, with meetings at ‘The Section’ (a shadowy institution which has been conspiring against Salander), with Salander lying in bed and barely speaking, and, as ever in this series, with people typing. Because the book has had to be reduced so much the narrative here will be largely lost on those who haven’t done their homework, and for those that have the mass of connection and detail is reduced to a series of brief scenes of people we’ve never met before sitting in chairs and explaining the plot to one another. For much of the middle section of the film scene after scene after scene seems to reveal yet ANOTHER new character, who’ll pop up for a scene or two, explain something, and then never be seen again, but the problem is we already know what happened to Salander, it’s been obvious since THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, so it feels like the movie is spending two hours putting together a 1000 piece jigsaw of a blank wall.

Even when we get to the set pieces (the attempt on Lisbeth’s life at the hospital, the attack at Erika Berger’s (Endre) home) director Daniel Alfredson fumbles the ball. The hospital sequence in particular lacks any suspense, and feels tossed off and perfunctory. The same is true of the courtroom set third act. This should be the great dramatic dénouement but, in spite of a fine performance from Annika Hallin as Lisbeth’s lawyer (also Blomkvist’s sister) and the customary excellence of Rapace’ quieter, but still forceful, turn it just doesn’t work. It’s all delivered so flatly, the other performances run towards the hammy (Anders Ahlbom as Dr. Teleborian is especially guilty here) and Alfredson’s matter of fact direction does nothing to energise the sequences. Where Neils Arden Oplev managed to truly adapt THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, make it a different but equally valid telling of Larsson’s story for cinema, Daniel Alfredson has only managed to put some bits of the books on screen. This is an inert film, were it not for Rapace and a handful of other performers (Nyqvist, Hallinn, Endre) it would be totally worthless.

All this said, it’s hard to lay all the blame at Alfredson and writer Ulf Ryberg’s door. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST doesn’t work as cinema, and it was never going to. As a novel it is neither claustrophobic enough to work as that kind of thriller nor expansive and exciting enough to work as a more action driven film, and by sidelining its most interesting character the book shot itself and this adaptation in the foot from the start.

Film Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE
DIR: Daniel Alfredson
CAST: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre,
Micke Spreitz, Yasmine Garbi, Paolo Roberto



Steig Larsson’s Millennium trilogy of novels is a genuine phenomenon. Best sellers around the world, they have already inspired the Swedish film adaptations that are currently rolling out around the world, there is a US remake to come (with at least the first film to be directed by David Fincher) and the extended versions of the Swedish films, broadcast on television over there, are due to be released on UK DVD some time in 2011, and something tells me that this is really only the beginning. Away from the hoopla surrounding it though, and the growing talk suggesting an aggressive Oscar campaign for Noomi Rapace, how does this second film hold up?

Looking at THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE in isolation is a little unfair, because it’s really only the first half of a huge story told over two novels (it concludes in THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, the adaptation of which opens in late November) and that means that it suffers many of the problems of the middle film. It does, thankfully, have a beginning, because it doesn’t follow as directly from THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO as you might expect (though you’d do well to go in having seen the first film, because Lisbeth Salander’s (Rapace) financial situation in this one is set up there). What it does lack is a conclusion, rather than ending it just sort of… stops, but that’s really a function of the book, and it would be unfair to criticise director Daniel Alfredson on that point. Especially when there are so many other things worth criticising here.

Steig Larsson’s source novel is a huge and often digressive beast, prone, even more so than Dragon Tattoo, to political rants. It’s also very dense, an laden with plot and character. Following Dragon Tattoo, which massively reduced the novel into a sharp focus on its central strand to excellent effect, screenwriter Jonas Frykberg does a very mixed job here of consolidating the material. The narrative feels very scattered, and often under nourished, with a lot of side plots which were very important in the book only dabbled in here. I can understand why Frykberg and Alfredson want to retain threads like the two investigations; the one led by the Police and the one adopted by journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Nyqvist), into the three murders that Salander is suspected of, setting off the movie’s chain of events. The problem is that the Police investigation is so under explored that the cops become little more than briefly glimpsed expository props, shoved in more for convenience and fan service than any great plot or character purpose. This is very much the case with any story outside of the two main threads; Salander’s attempts to evade capture and find out who has framed her, and Blomkvist’s efforts to find Salander and discover the real killer of Salander’s guardian and a Millennium journalist and his girlfriend. There are also smart deletions, most notably the endless Salander on holiday sequence that opens the novel, delaying the start of the story proper until somewhere around page 200.

Whatever its strengths and weaknesses, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO was genuinely cinematic, boasting some genuinely striking visuals and fine use of the very wide 2.35:1 format. The two sequels were originally made solely for Swedish television, and it shows. The picture is tighter (the 1.78:1 of most widescreen TV sets) and the whole movie just looks and feels flatter. The first film looked like cinema, this looks like telly on a big screen. Daniel Alfredson (brother of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN helmer Tomas) only finds a couple of really compelling images during the whole film (the most notable being Salander disguised in striking, stylised, make up). Overall he doesn’t make any glaring errors, it’s more that his directorial style feels very much like ‘insert tab A into slot B’. This is even felt in the performances, which, outside of the leads, have a bit of a rote quality this time out.


Some of these issues, especially those with the dangling sub-plot threads might well be addressed when we see the TV version of the film, which adds 56 minutes to the running time, deletions that are felt while watching the film. All this said, I don’t want to give the impression that THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE is terrible, indeed it moves at a great clip when it gets moving, and has several really stand out sequences. There’s a great fight scene involving boxer Paolo Roberto (who Larsson wrote into the novel without telling him, and who is in good enough shape to play himself), Micke Spreitz (playing a blonde killing machine who feels no pain, a role apparently offered to Dolph Lundgren) and Yasmine Garbi (who has a ferocious energy here and a tenderness in her scenes with Rapace, making her a great fit as Miriam Wu). There is also a moment, which differs from the book, in which Salander and Blomkvist briefly connect by virtual means, it’s a lovely change, and though it is brief the reactions from Rapace and Nyqvist in that moment speak volumes about their characters. However, the lions share of the great moments belong to Noomi Rapace’ indelible Salander. Whether she’s fighting two huge bikers, getting buried alive and then wreaking vengeance or calmly threatening people, she’s clearly one of the iconic characters in cinema already and every scene just re-confirms that.

Noomi Rapace IS this movie, every frame she's in she competely owns. There are other things to recommend it, certainly it is never dull, and there is able support from Nyqvist and, in a slightly expanded role, Lena Endre, but Rapace is reason enough to buy a ticket all by herself. She’s an incredibly intense actress, as Salander there’s always something going on behind her eyes, everything seems calculated. Rapace has little dialogue in this film, especially in the latter hour, but still her performance is full of texture. Watch as she sizes up her opponents before the fight scene with the bikers, the focus of her rage, but also the dispassion of it, and contrast that with the much more personal scene in which she threatens her guardian (Peter Andersson). Look too at the smile as she lets Blomkvist explore her apartment, or the tough but affectionate way that she talks to her lover Miriam Wu. All these tiny things add up, and slowly, inexorably, Rapace makes you believe in the existence of this young woman who, on the page, can read like a cross between a superhero and Larsson’s sexual fantasy. It is a brilliant piece of acting, and Rapace deserves to become a major, major star on the back of it. The question at this point is really whether she’s just too good for the shit Hollywood is serving.

It will be worth revisiting THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE in November, hopefully a few cinemas will double bill it with THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, because this is ultimately half a film. It’s not entirely successful, and considerably less impressive than its predecessor, but it stays afloat thanks to a whip cracking pace and another extraordinary performance from Noomi Rapace.

24FPS at LLGFF '10

The 24th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival


ELOISE
DIR: Jesús Garay
CAST: Diana Gomez, Ariadna Cabrol,
Laura Conejero, Bernat Saumell


Eloïse is a very standard issue lesbian love story. The form is very familiar; straight girl Asia (Gomez) finds an advert from an art student who needs a life model. That student is gay girl Eloïse (Cabrol). The two girls become close and Asia finds herself, much to the disapproval of her controlling mother (Conejero), falling for Eloïse. This story is cross cut with the aftermath of a serious accident, which has landed a comatose Asia in hospital.

I’m not sure how the lesbian audience will respond to this film, but to me it felt like a film by a straight male for a straight male audience. Far be it from me to complain about Garay and his actresses frank approach to sex and nudity - I like naked girls as much as the next straight guy (or, I guess, lesbian woman) - but there is definitely an exploitative feel to much of this movie. That said, the nudity is, like the whole film, beautifully shot, and the love scene, while explicit, is also rather sweet and tender.

Eloïse is a hard film to sum up, because parts of it work really well, and others fall totally flat. Sadly the main problem is with the screenplay. It’s just so familiar. It feels as though writer Cristina Moncunill has watched a lot of semi-mainstream lesbian films (Water Lilies certainly comes to mind, as does Fucking Amal) and tried to follow the formula. What Eloïse misses, though, is the plausibility. The script simply doesn’t give the characters who are supposed to be falling in love enough of a connection. Despite the efforts of the actresses it feels like, when they finally kiss, and subsequently have sex, they are doing so because it’s in the script. It’s not that Diana Gomez can’t put across Asia’s feelings, it’s just that there doesn’t seem to be a scene, or series of scenes, for them to grow. In this simplistic screenplay Asia’s boyfriend (Saumell) is ill one weekend and so she calls Eloïse (for no real reason I can work out, except that it’s in the script) and their day hanging out ends up turning into a first date. It’s all clunky, grinding gear changes, going from first straight to third and from third right to fifth. Adding a few more scenes would help immeasurably, but as it is this relationship just doesn’t feel organic.

On the plus side, Jesús Garay clearly knows his way around a camera, as he should, having made his first feature in 1981. Eloïse isn’t a groundbreaking looking film, but it is certainly attractive, particularly in a pivotal scene in a swimming pool, which, underwater, has a lovely dreamlike feel about it. The acting is mixed, with Bernat Saumell rather dull as Asia’s blandly handsome boyfriend and Laura Conejero turning the melodrama up to eleven as her mother. However, the leads are both much better, and between them rescue Eloïse from total irrelevance.

Diana Gomez has a tough job as Asia. Her character is deliberately very average; almost the definition of a ‘normal’ young woman, and sadly that means that the film grants her very little personality. As this sweet, normal, girl thrown for a loop by unexpected feelings Gomez does some nice work; she’s especially good in the scene the morning after Asia and Eloïse first sleep together, waking up naked, and then suddenly embarrassed by that fact when she sees Eloïse, also naked, sleeping next to her. If she can learn English to a good standard Gomez’ talent and her astounding beauty (picture all the best bits of Maria Valverde and Scarlett Johannson, in a single, jaw-dropping body) should carry her a long way. Ariadna Cabrol has perhaps an easier time ; Eloïse is a rather more interesting character, and though she’s not very developed her artistic bent and her more fearless approach allow Cabrol to have fun with the role. Gomez, thanks to her astonishing beauty, is perhaps the most compelling thing in the film, but Cabrol has the better character and gives the better performance, making Eloïse magnetic and sexy.

At the end of the day I was surprised that this film was shown in a lesbian and gay film festival, first because its treatment of lesbianism felt like softcore wish fulfilment for men and secondly, more troublingly, because the ending could easily be read as punishing Asia for embarking on this lesbian relationship, literally hitting her with tragedy as soon as she decides to commit to Eloïse. It also wants to have its tragic cake and eat it, giving us a final shot of Asia and Eloïse literally riding off into the sunset. It’s a perfect encapsulation of a film that’s confused about what it wants to be. Is it titillation or tenderness that Garay is shooting for? Is he pitching to a lesbian audience or to straight men? He doesn’t seem sure, and while there are good things in it, his film is the worse for this confusion.


KARLEKENS KRIGARE
[WARRIORS OF LOVE]
DIR: Simon Staho
CAST: Josefin Ljungman, Shima Niavarani


Here’s the headline of what the LLGFF brochure says about Warriors of Love: “Intense and dark drama about a troubled young lesbian couple who are prepared to do anything to be together”. That sounds interesting, I thought, I also liked the title and a quick scan of the extended information made this sound like an interesting, if offbeat, film. God, how I wish that Warriors of Love had been the film that was advertised.

Warriors of Love consists of 93 of the most pretentious, ponderous, minutes of cinema I’ve ever sat through. If I told you the basic story - When Ida (Ljungman) tells her girlfriend Karin (Niavarani) that her Father used to abuse her the girls determine to kill him, and then go on the run, thinking the authorities will be hot on their trail - you’d probably picture an engaging drama with some intense sequences; a little action, a few really intense, confrontational, dialogue scenes and a dramatic ending. You’d be wrong. Instead, Simon Staho’s films is built almost entirely out of endless pauses. Scenes that should last a minute run for five, solely due to the cavernous gaps between lines, time in which Staho’s camera does nothing but statically gaze at the scenery. One scene, perhaps the most dramatic argument between Ida and Karin, has the characters as tiny figures, barely visible in a long shot while, for the whole three-minute scene, the camera looks at a bridge. I’m sure it’s a nice bridge, it’s probably very well engineered, but, and I hate to have to clarify this, THIS MOVIE ISN’T ABOUT THAT FUCKING BRIDGE.

To say that Ida and Karin have no personality is, perhaps, to understate the problem that Warriors of Love has with characterisation. They are the only people we ever see and they are both complete nothings. I’ve often complained about the fact that filmmakers seem to think that one trait equals a personality, well; Ida and Karin don’t even have a single personality trait between them. All their dialogue is delivered in a sleepy monotone, which is only appropriate and effective in a single scene. Because neither of them has anything approaching a personality there is absolutely no sense of connection either to or between the characters, the actresses seem comfortable enough with each other, and with their two screen kisses, but there’s no spark there, no feeling and come the ending, when they each say that they can’t live without the other, you just don’t believe it. Not only do they not talk like a couple, they don’t talk like people, there’s barely a single conversation in this mind-bendingly boring film that wasn’t sniggered at in the cinema, largely because of the length of the pauses in dialogue. By the end I could picture Staho behind his camera, cueing each line as he decided that, this time, a 30 second pause was, perhaps, enough.

Terrible though Warriors of Love is, and difficult as it was to restrain myself from standing up in the cinema and bellowing “get on with it”, there is something in it that nags at me. It has two really good scenes. Really good scenes. The first has Ida and Karin lying in a field, Ida begins to talk, at first the silly talk of a little troll seems innocent and silly but it soon becomes clear that she’s relating the language her Father used when abused her. It is an astounding scene in a film so bad, genuinely creepy and disturbing, acted with real conviction by Josefin Ljungman, and here Staho’s unflinching camera technique is completely appropriate. Another strong moment, which also centres on a monologue by Ljungman, who I’d really like to see in a better film than this, because I suspect she’s really good, has Ida describing the first time (or perhaps the most recent time, it’s not terribly clear) she had sex with Karin. It’s the one moment that you feel any history, or any affection, between the characters.

Warriors of Love is, make no mistake, a boring, pretentious, piece of crap but there are flashes in it of the film that might have been; those two strong scenes, several beautiful shots that demonstrate that Staho does have an eye, and a few moments that indicate that at least one of these actresses is a good deal better than she’s allowed to be in this film, all in all, it feels like a missed opportunity.

Review Post 68: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Shutter Island / Green Zone

MAN SOM HATAR KVINNOR
[THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO]
DIR: Niels Arden Oplev
CAST: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist



Tragically, the Swedish writer Stieg Larsson died just after delivering the manuscripts for the three thrillers that have since become known as the Millennium trilogy to his publisher, not living to see the books take off, or the film versions that premiered in Sweden last year and, throughout 2010, will be coming to the UK (The Girl Who Played With Fire opens in September, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest in November).

In a generally very faithful adaptation, Noomi Rapace plays Larsson’s titular heroine Lisbeth Salander; a troubled but brilliant young computer hacker whose backstory is teased a little here, but will be explored in full in the next two films. Here she plays a supporting role, helping campaigning journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Nyquvist) when he is tasked by an aging industrialist to solve the 40 year old suspected murder of his neice. Together Blomkvist and Salander unearth some horrendous crimes, but are they related to the vanishing of Harriet Vanger?

Despite a two and a half hour running time The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (the film retains the book’s English title, rather than using literal translation ‘Men Who Hate Women’) doesn’t have the time to include the mass of background detail in Larsson’s book, but, for the most part, the deletions make sense and don’t compromise the narrative. There are only a couple of exceptions. The first is rushing of the last ten minutes of the film, which tie up an important storyline about a corrupt businessman that Blomkvist is attempting to expose, and which impacts on the last two books and the other is the almost total deletion of the important relationship between Blomkvist and his boss and on/off lover Erika Berger (Lena Endre).

These are perhaps nitpicks, but I wonder how they will impact on the next two films. Aside from these minor issues though, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is an excellent adaptation. Importantly it preserves both the essential story and the feel of the book. The casting is especially on point. Michael Nyqvist has a care worn look that suits Blomkvist, but he, and the film, really comes to life most when Noomi Rapace is on screen. Rapace clearly took the role of Lisbeth Salander very seriously; she lost weight, cut her hair, started dressing like Salander and even got ear, eyebrow, nostril and septum piercings. This immersion has really paid off, as it really does feel as though, both in look and demeanour, Rapace’ Salander has stepped out of Larsson’s book. Salander is a character who holds her cards close to her chest, and is very emotionally closed off, and Rapace manages the tricky feat of putting this across without being dull, or seeming closed off to the audience.

If you’ve seen a few detective movies then, with the number of suspects reduced from the novel, you may well work out at least part of the answer to the whodunit, but that doesn’t stop The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo being an engaging mystery. The clues (for the most part) come together in a way that is both logical and surprising, and the mystery is nearly as compellingly macabre as that in Se7en. Director Niels Arden Oplev keeps a strong grip on the look and the performances, and he manages to keep the extreme content (including a couple of lengthy scenes of sexual assault) just this side of palatable though the film remains, at times, shocking and challenging to watch. It’s not an especially individual looking film, drawing much inspiration from Se7en and its ilk, but it’s well executed enough to stand on it’s own. Until the last ten minutes Oplev also excels in controlling the film’s pace, keeping it moving fast enough that we never feel the 152 minutes that the film runs but never rushing us through the story too fast, or cutting so deep into the novel that the story is compromised.

There is talk of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo being remade for the US market. It simply doesn’t need to be, this is a thrilling movie, a fine adaptation, and, like the book it is adapted from, a film that should prove highly accessible to audiences all over the world, assuming they’ve the stomach for some of it’s nastier moments. Whether you’ve never even heard of the books or you’ve read nothing else since they were published, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo comes highly recommended, if for no other reason than you should take note of Noomi Rapace, who ought to be able to spin this great performance into an interesting international career


SHUTTER ISLAND
DIR: Martin Scorsese
CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley,
Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer



I always want to love Martin Scorsese’s movies, because for nearly 40 years Scorsese has been at the forefront of American cinema, making more brilliant movies in the seventies alone than most directors could dream of in an entire career. I didn’t love Shutter Island. That’s not to say that there aren’t moments of genuine, jaw-slackening, brilliance in it, but the film as a whole ends up, sadly, being really rather ordinary.

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (whose work also provided the starting points for Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone), Shutter Island stars Scorsese’s current leading man of choice Leonardo DiCaprio as US Marshal Teddy Daniels, who has been sent to the Ashecliffe asylum on Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a prisoner (Mortimer), but when a storm traps Teddy and his partner (Ruffalo) on the island Teddy begins to suspect a conspiracy involving experiments being carried out on the patients by the chief doctor (Kingsley).

Of course that’s not the full story, there’s a big twist late in the day, and that’s the problem with the film. That twist is, minutes in, so stark staring obvious that however good the rest of the film is (and it is often very good indeed) it just feels rather inconsequential. I knew exactly where the film was going at all times, and the journey simply wasn’t interesting enough, at least from a dramatic standpoint, to mitigate against that. The performances are all of a particular style. The film is Scorsese’s homage to the noirs films of the 40’s and 50’s, and he’s directed his actors towards the slightly bigger than life style that was prevalent then, everyone does well in it (and Ben Kingsley comes off as slightly less of a ham than usual), but it does take a little getting used to. Leonardo DiCaprio has been growing in stature as an actor film by film over the last few years. Here he’s less effective than in The Departed or Revolutionary Road, and his performance makes the twist feel very obvious indeed, but given the complexities of the role and the style of acting that he’s forced into he does rather well.

Among the supporting performances, Mark Ruffalo does perhaps the most nuanced work, his best since Zodiac and Michelle Williams and Patricia Clarkson do well in what are rather thin roles. It’s no surprise that the performer who comes closest to stealing the film is Emily Mortimer, she’s a gifted character actress, and is cast beautifully against type here as insane murderer Rachel Salondo. Mortimer’s natural warmth works well to put us at our ease with the character, though we know what she’s done, and makes the inevitable explosion both credible and scary.

Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the story and acting, they aren’t really, in a lot of ways, the film’s focus. Shutter Island is very much a showcase for three technical talents; director Scorsese, cinematographer Robert Richardson and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, all three have been working together for some time now, and their talents combine here to create a technically stunning work. Most striking are the dream sequences, shot by Richardson in slightly oversaturated colours, giving a hyper-real feeling to Teddy’s hallucinations, as if they are more genuine to him than the equally nightmarish Ashcliffe.

Despite the fact that all the dreams involve violence of some kind they are all quite beautiful to behold. In the scenes at Dachau concentration camp bodies form nightmarishly beautiful ice sculptures, in one scene with Michelle Williams she burns, and becomes ash in DiCaprio’s arms, in the single most beautiful use of CGI in any of Scorsese’s films. For her part Schoomaker, as ever, finds a perfect rhythm for Scorsese and Richardson’s imagery. The look is also very heavily influenced by 40’s and 50’s noir, resulting in such odd seeming touches as some really obvious rear screen projection in the opening scene and a lot of visual nods in the direction of films and filmmakers Scorsese admires, most notably (and appropriately) the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.

Taken in purely technical terms Shutter Island is a masterpiece, but because it is so predictable it is never truly satisfying as drama, and so it left me, unfortunately, rather cold.


GREEN ZONE
DIR: Paul Greengrass
CAST: Matt Damon, Jason Isaacs, Brendan Gleeson,
Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan



I was rather enjoying Green Zone, it was no great masterpiece, but it was a reasonably entertaining action movie, set in the immediate aftermath of the ‘victory’ in the 2003 Iraq war. Then came the ending(s). Two scenes in which the moral was declaimed with such sledgehammer subtlety that I begun to wonder if Aesop had written the screenplay. And that was all it took. From there, as I looked back the movie just began to unravel in front of me. I began to notice all the many flaws. The plot holes, the script problems, the action seemed to work less well. Retrospect, essentially, killed Green Zone.

Green Zone is the latest teaming for Bourne director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon, and it’s easy to tell because they’ve essentially made the same film for a third time running. Okay, this time Damon is Roy Miller of the Marines, and he’s looking for WMD rather than his identity, but that doesn’t change the fact that in form and feel this is basically Bourne goes to the desert. This is something that also carries through in Damon’s performance. It’s a shame because he’s a really capable actor, but with Greengrass all he really does is spit dialogue in a functional manner; there’s no emotion there, no nuance,

A lack of nuance is a problem that pervades the film. Politically it knows exactly what it wants to say, and proceeds to bellow it at us through a megaphone for the film’s entire running time. There’s no room for shades of grey here; all things are blak or white. Miller is the goodie and everyone associated with Bush administration is a baddie. I know that Greengrass has said that he wanted to make a mainstream film about the Iraq war, but that doesn’t have to mean treating the audience as political idiots, or making a film with the depth of a small puddle on a hot day, and this all precedes those two endings.

I have, I think it’s fair to say, a bit of a problem with shaky-cam. Used with consideration (as in the opening chase in Narc, for example) it can thrust you right into the thick of a situation, but Greengrass doesn’t use it like that. Paul Greengrass uses shaky-cam as though the camera will only work if it is moving, and it is incredibly irritating. Rather than draw me in this device called continual attention to itself, practically yelling “you’re watching a movie”. This especially true of the long final chase, in which there’s barely a frame that isn’t in erratic motion, add this to the fact that it takes places at night, in barely lit streets and the effect is incredibly annoying. You can’t see a fucking thing. Geography and sense go out the window, and drama follows with them. It baffles me that Greengrass is considered a good action director, because this shooting technique seems to go out of its way to ensure that you see as little of the action as possible.

There are things in Green Zone that work. Until the out of nowhere final scenes Khalid Abdalla is effective as Iraqui translator ‘Freddie’ and the scenes in the middle of the film before Greengrass has to surrender the film to boring, badly shot, action there are some genuinely tense scenes as Miller tries to discover what has happened to a prisoner snatched from him earlier in the day. There are also effective appearances from Jason Isaacs and his rather magnificent ‘tache as the designated villains of the piece) though, given the shallowness of the script, it is debateable whether Isaacs or the ‘tache gives the better performance.

The further I get from Green Zone the less I like it, but I can’t help thinking that, had it not shot itself in the head with those two awful pieces of moralising at the end of the film this review might have read rather differently.