Green Zone Blu-Ray Disc Review

A few movies have come and gone about the Middle East since 9/11 like The Kingdom, Syriana, and Body of Lies.

Green Zone is based on the novel Imperial Life In The Emerald City. Green Zone refers to the safe area in Baghdad where American armed forces and ruthless corporations set up shop to bring about American democracy after the invasion. The peace, calm, and access to 'American style living' in the Green Zone is a juxtaposition to the utter chaos and bedlam just outside of the Green Zone which many Iraqis and soldiers were dealing with on a daily basis in the time the movie takes place and still do to varying extents today.

Matt Damon plays a soldier tasked with finding weapons of mass destruction after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but keeps coming up empty based on faulty intelligence. Hmmm, sound familiar?

Damon's character then goes on a quest to discover the truth about the faulty intelligence and exposing who is responsible for perpetrating a lie about one of the key motivations for the invasion of Iraq.

One critic called Green Zone thrilling and gripping and while it had great moments, I wasn't glued to my seat as you pretty much know what is coming and the movie becomes a chase movie in the second and third acts.

PICTURE:

Excellent transfer. Some scenes at night seemed to be deliberately grainy which didn't get on my nerves but might for others. Green Zone was directed by Paul Greengrass who directed Damon in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum and Greengrass again opted for a handheld approach to many of his shot choices which makes for some shaky camera work at times.

SOUND:

A 5.1 DTS Master Audio track has great levels between dialogue, gunshots, and explosions. As opposed to the DTS Master Audio track for Public Enemies, where the dialogue was low and the gunfire quite high. There is a scene where Damon goes to a prison where people of interest are being held and it is eerie when you hear prisoners moaning or complaining in the surround channels.

Overall, it was great movie, but I didn't feel a shiver or gripped to the edge of my seat.

PICTURE: 4.5 out of 5

SOUND: 5 out of 5

STORY: 3.5 out of 5

Attention Bev Oda ...

It's not that its not not alright to have added that extra not into that funding document ....

Which is pretty much how the Conservative's are dancing around this issue.

And Stephen Harper, seriously, you dismiss Helena Guergis because of unproven criminal allegations and don't even welcome her back after she is cleared by the RCMP, while Bev Oda clearly forged a document and then lied about it and you don't even give her a slap on the wrist?

Dude, you would be a horrible school principal.

Got Democracy?

Now that Egypt is in revolution hangover mode, we should take stalk of the disconnect between forcing democracy on one country, Iraq, and tolerating autocratic dictators like Mubarak.

The disconnect is obvious, government foreign policy and mass media tend to focus on what they deem to be important. So while the general public in the West might be praising the people's uprising in Egypt, did Western governments try to push democratic reforms in Egypt, or the media focus on stories about Mubarak's 31 year stranglehold on government before protests broke out?

Mubarak didn't use chemical weapons against his own people like Saddam Hussein did, which made Hussein an easy target after 9/11 (Got WMD's?), but Mubarak's tyranny was more subtle in having monopolies and corruption in the roost he occupied. Hussein became such an easy scapegoat for forcing democracy on Iraq, even though there was not an Iraqi involved in the 9/11 attacks. In fact, invading Saudi Arabia would have made more sense based on the countries of birth of those directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

I digress though, my point is that we should be fed up with what governments and mainstream media want to show us about the Middle East as we don't often get the real or full story about what is happening behind the scenes is these 'quiet' dictatorships that are tolerated by Western powers that be.

I have an acquaintance who lived in Libya for a time and he remarked that Gadhafi is good to his people. Well, apparently not good enough when you consider that inflation of food prices in many Middle Eastern countries, is more then double of what it is in North America. Corruption and nepotism seem to be key bones of contention when it comes to the protests on going in the Middle East, but inflation was and is the silent revolutionary trigger that can set off a powder keg. China, you better watch out!

It will be interesting to see what will emerge out of the ashes of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, though it will be years before any significant changes come about. Meanwhile, Western governments who often rely on 'quiet' dictatorships because they have something of value economically that we want, or don't overtly threaten us, or are propagandized as a threat to us, are scrambling to rewrite foreign policy as we speak.

And Glenn Beck, protests a communist plot in Egypt? Seriously, Mubarak was a communist by virtue of the fact that he held power for so many decades. Perhaps we should let Mubarak rule the US for 31 years and see what happens.