Catch "Green Zone" this weekend before it splits for good. It's flawed, but it's still a must-see. No one is better than this film's director, Paul Greengrass, at the jitter-cam choreography he perfected in his "Bourne" movies, and here it's all subsumed in dizzying visual contrasts between the sweeping remains of Saddam Hussein's regime and headlong action through the closed-in streets of Baghdad. Helicopters swooping into jungles have been the image of choice for Vietnam War movies; Greengrass makes choppers seem just as ominous whipping up the sand. More important, the film brings audiences a great and original new character, "Freddy" (Khalid Abdalla), the interpreter and sometimes the right-hand man for the movie's hero, an idealistic Army Chief Warrant Officer (Matt Damon, left). Freddy is a daring creation -- a Gunga Din for a post-colonial age, a lovable local with a mind of his own.
He's totally a creation of the moviemakers, but Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who wrote the source book ("Imperial Life in the Emerald City"), told me Freddy was one of his favorite parts of the movie, "just a brilliant, fascinating character. And Khalid Abdalla did a masterful job in the movie. He really captured the conflicting emotions and motivations and reactions that a number of Iraqis had in those early days, particularly Iraqis who took a risk to work with, not just U.S. military forces, but U.S. diplomats and news organizations. Freddy is really true to life -- a lot of that character feels authentic to me."