Bar Stool Review Of GREEN ZONE

From the juiced-box and the soundtrack: Moby - Alice

Ramblings: Zoned Out

Final Proof: 3 Shots

You know how you drink on meth? Sure, it sounds like a good idea at first 'cause you're gonna get the best of both, so you shoot or snort or whatever it is you do with meth and you pop open that beer tab or uncork the bottle of wine or unscrew the bottle of whiskey or saber that bottle of champagne (hey, i know what to do with booze but not meth, so sue me) and then, pretty much right from the get go you feel dizzy and shaky and you kinda wanna throw up and you pray for it all to stop and you want the clock to move backwards so you can either do the meth thing or the booze thing but it's too late so there's nothing left to do but ride it out and tattoo "Never Again" on your forearm so there's no chance in hell you'll try that crap another time. Yeah, it's kinda like that with Green Zone.

Paul Greengrass rocks. He is a killer director. United 93 is the absolute best movie ever made about the worst day in recent American memory. Like Bloody Sunday, Greengrass was able to make a movie so realistic about a historical incident that it looked like a documentary.

Greengrass also rocked the last two Bourne movies (The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum). Lots of style and suspense, the films raised the bar for action movies.

Unfortunately, Grass Is Greener tried to mix both of these types of movie into Green Zone and it turned out like the intro paragraph [Shout out to Brandi Alexandra for her help brainstorming the tack i took with that]. His pseudo-documentaries are like fine wines and his action films pack all the rush of crystal meth but when he mixes both of them, we're let down (and a little nauseous). Green Zone is black and white so it lacks the ambiguity of reality, but at the same time is based on a true story so there's a lot of backstory telling that detracts from the action and slows down the pace.

Yigal Naor as General Al Rawi

Khalid Abdalla as Freddy

So, with all this bitching and moaning, why did i give it 3 shots (besides the fact i'm a generous mother)? Lots of reasons. While i'm not a big fan of handcam's, and this is the first movie i ever really noticed how bad it can be (hell, i even liked it in Cloverfield), it did give the film a frenetic feel. Matt Damon did a solid job in the role of "Miller" but the exotic talent stole the show. Yigal Naor, an Israeli actor who actually played Saddam Hussein in The House Of Saddam, kicked ass as Iraqi General Al Rawi, aka The Jack Of Clubs. Another rockin' role was that of Freddy, as done by Khalid Abdalla (Egyptian descent, born in Glasgow, who also appeared as a terrorist in Greengrass' United 93). The story was good, the action was hot, the style was there, so there was a lot that entertained in this movie.

Amy Ryan as Lawrie Dayne, Now We're Talkin' Entertainment

Buzz Kills (Watch Out for Spoilers)

Sex: 1 Shot

Babes, we're talkin' about an Iraqi war movie: guys and guys and more guys than a frat house at a Jimmy Buffet kegger.

i'm considering myself lucky they decided to include Amy Ryan as Wall Street Journal journalist Lawrie Dayne. She's cute as a shotglass of Mike's Hard Lemonade but the closest we get to sexy is the shot i posted just above. Here's a collage of her other shots:

For those of you who prefer soldiers to journalists, i got some Matt Damon for you.

Drink: ½ Shot

A couple beer references. When soldiers visit the Republican Palace / Coalition Provisional Authority HQ, the grunts drool over the lucious things hanging out at the swimming pool, not to mention the beer and Domino's pizza. When they ask their commander if they can have a beer, they're told, "One".

There's also some beer at the hotel Lawrie's staying at.

Rock & Roll: 2 Shots

i'll give the rock 'n' roll attitude of this a couple shots, but don't go seeing this movie expecting to hear the kind of rock we got in The Hurt Locker.

Boring Technical Crap

Written by:

Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone)

Brian Helgeland (Screenplay)

Directed by: Paul Greengrass

Starring

Amy Ryan - Lawrie Dayne

Matt Damon - Miller

Khalid Abdalla - Freddy

Yigal Naor - General Al Rawi

Bottom Line

You should pro'lly wait for this to come out on DVD so the shaking camera thing on the big screen doesn't send you into epileptic seizures.

Bonus Round

Another still of Amy Ryan (and some guy):

Bar Stool Review of INVICTUS

Ramblings: Rugby Diplomacy

Final Proof: 4 Shots

You know how you drink with heroes? Those people who make you feel better about yourself, not by getting drunker than you but simply by hanging with you. They've got this inner light thing going on which doesn't even come from the booze. What makes them rock so hard though, isn't that they succeed in being cool but that they don't even give a rat's ass what cool is supposed to be. The heroes i'm talking about are not amazing people; they're ordinary people, like me or maybe even you, who do heroic things. They inspire you to believe in the hero hiding inside you. Plus, they always pay for your drinks. Invictus is kinda like that, except for the paying for your drinks part.

Most sports films are the story of individuals surpassing their limitations. Invictus is the story of a nation doing it.

You couldn't swing a dead soldier in this movie without hitting something inspirational. Morgan Freeman's portrayal of Nelson Mandela is inspiring. The story of how Mandela used the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa to unite that country's different peoples is an inspiration. And Clint Eastwood's directing is inspired, from the historical accuracy to the little surprises in predictable sequences, from the credible arena crowd shots to his varied camera use (TV news segments, dramatic tension, rugby action), Eastwood scored big here and proves, like wine i can't afford, that he's getting better with age.

There are only a couple stains in this picture. Like the music. He had his son Kyle brew some tunes and they came out like syrup: sticky sweet, slow and dragging the movie down. Apart from that, well, you know me. i'm a sensitive wuss and most of the film had me choked up like a beer belch that can't decide which way it wants to go. Still, like a player in a rugby match, Eastwood sometimes fumbled and went over the top; but even if his game strayed occasionally out of bounds, i still ended up having a ball.

Buzz Kills (Watch Out for Spoilers)

Sex: 1 Shot

Sure it wasn't the point of the flick, but there was absolutely no sex in Invictus. At all. Makes you wonder how South Africans reproduce. At least there were a lot of South African babes...

Like Marguerite Wheatley (28) who plays Nerine, Francois Pienaar's (Matt Damon) girlfriend (who he doesn't sleep with because it's South Africa and they apparently don't do that kind of thing 'down there').

Then there's Leleti Khumalo (39), who plays Mandela's assistant, Mary.

Bonnie Henna as Zindzi:

Not to mention Refiloe Mpakanyane as Jessie the secretary.

As for the men, of course there was Matt Damon (39).

Clint's son Scott Eastwood (23) has a small role of a key rugby player (like i can be bothered to look up the stupid name).

Drink: 2 Shots

You'll find the best drink references below in the Slurred Speeches portion of my show. Besides that, you have people drinking beer at home and in the bar while watching rugby. About as surprising as the ending.

Also, there was a scene at a formal reception and i'm guessing Eastwood used fake wine. The wine wasn't the deep red of real wine or the luminous pink of rosé but instead this odd tinge that Crayola would call fake wine if they made a crayon of it.

Rock & Roll: -1 Shot

SUBTLY HIGHLIGHTED THE OBVIOUS A LOT OVER AND OVER.

Slurred Speeches

In the locker room after a big loss, Team Captain Francois Pienaar (Damon) takes a beer from a cooler and makes the following toast to his depressed teammates:

PIENAAR: Everybody take a beer.

[This is an order. The entire team takes a beer, including Pienaar.]

PIENAAR: A toast ... [Pienaar cracks his beer, raises it up. They all crack and raise their beers.]

PIENAAR: ... to the taste of defeat. Drink it. Remember it. And promise yourself never to taste it again.

[Pienaar takes one long swig --]

PIENAAR: You’re right. It tastes like kuk.

[-- tosses his beer against the wall, so that it ruptures.

Eighteen other beers rupture against the wall. The dressing

room is awash with beer and foam -- and re-kindled passion.]

Here's the Beer Drinking Cheer the team chants in the bar while one of the players is drinking:

He´s a drunkard,
He´s true blue,
He´s a pisspot through and through.
He´s a bastard so they say,
Tried to go to heaven,
But he went the other way.

During the Finals, Mandela is sitting beside the President of New Zealand and they have this exchange:

MANDELA (to NZ P.M.): Perhaps we should make a small wager?
NEW ZEALAND P.M.: All your gold, for all our sheep?
MANDELA: I was thinking more along the lines of a case of wine.

Boring Technical Crap

Written by:

Anthony Peckham (screenplay)

John Carlin (book)

Directed by: Clint Eastwood

Starring

Morgan Freeman - Nelson Mandela

Marguerite Wheatley - Nerine

Leleti Khumalo - Mary

Bonnie Henna - Zindzi

Refiloe Mpakanyane - Jessie

Matt Damon - Francois Pienaar

Scott Eastwood - Joel Stransky

Bottom Line

Like Pizza Night in The Bar None, this has something for everyone (though runts 15 and under will miss out on the historical significance).