Green Zone - now available for DVD rental

Green Zone spent a lot of time on my Lovefilm list as 'currently unavailable' - meaning that it is available for sale, but not for rent. No need to worry, I'm happy to wait. And wait I did, for nearly 2 years. Finally a month ago Green Zone shifted its status on Lovefilm from being unavailable for rent to being a normal film. A similar thing happened to A Serious Man earlier last year. I wonder how much money the distribution companies managed to make out of sales of these two films before they realised that people are much more likely to download them illegally than buy them when they're not given the option to rent? Hopefully not too much. I can't imagine any situation in which I wouldn't want to spent money going to the cinema to see a film but would be happy to buy the DVD immediately upon release. Can anyone imagine anyone doing that?

Whatever the distribution company's business model is, I beat them at their own game and waited them out until their film was available to rent normally. The film stars Matt Damon as a specialist soldier during the recent Iraq war of 2003. The task he is assigned is to visit dangerous locations throughout the nation at which weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are thought to be stored. The film opens with Damon's character visiting such a site and (once again) coming up empty-handed. This is just the latest in a series of red herrings, and as such he starts to question the validity of the intelligence that is sending him and his team on these missions. His questions to his commanding officer raise the eyebrows of a local CIA agent (played by Brendon Gleeson trying his very best to cover up his Irish accent), who convinces Damon's character to go on a secret mission within Iraq to oust the truth behind their failure to find the WMD. It's basically because the US government made it all up.

Looking back at this period in history with almost a decade of hindsight, it is obvious now that there were no WMDs in Iraq. This was obvious to many of us in 2003, but the leaders of Britain and the USA convinced enough of the world that these weapons existed and set about launching their illegal war. To many, the Iraqi war has now come to an end for Britain and the US and is in danger of becoming a historical footnote. It is important that this does not happen. The blatant lies and propaganda surrounding the 'evidence' for the existence of WMDs in Iraq needs to stay fresh in the mind of the public, because when they try it next time (and they will) we need people to be wise to it.

In that it's trying to sell an important political story to a wide audience, Green Zone is similar to Comrades. In sharp contrast to Comrades though, Green Zone is a film that will succeed by having a mass appeal. Green Zone stars several big name actors, has a big name director, superb action sequences and a big box office draw. Contrast that to Comrades' intricately detailed realism and lengthy depictions of the tedium of 19th century life - giving it a limited appeal. You might argue that Green Zone contains a lot of plot contrivances and certain characters behave in a way that would never be tolerated in the US army, but these are concessions to reality that director Paul Greengrass is prepared to make in order to tell an important story in a way that will engage a wide audience.

Green Zone is a good action film that does well to get a message about political deceit into the public domain.