Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Paul Greengrass
Stars: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendon Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs, Khalid Abdalla.
The war in Iraq is still box office poison, and the list of casualties continues (Redacted, Stop-Loss, In The Valley Of Elah, etc). But one film that may reverse the trend is Green Zone, a frenetically paced action thriller set in Iraq in the months immediately following the invasion in 2003.
Matt Damon plays US Warrant Officer Roy Miller, an idealistic soldier in charge of a team looking for Saddam’s much vaunted Weapons of Mass Destruction. But every lead they are given turns up empty, and Miller begins to suspect that the whole exercise is a waste of time. He believes that the whole thing is a political stunt used to justify US action in the Middle East.
But when he questions the accuracy of the intelligence upon which they are heavily reliant, he finds himself in conflict with Poundstone (a well cast Greg Kinnear), a slimy and self-serving Pentagon official heading the US war effort. Poundstone has been using Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan) to perpetuate the myth of the existence of these WMDs through the media. “The reasons we go to war always matter,” Miller snaps at the smug Poundstone.
With the aid of Brown (Brendon Gleeson), an honest CIA agent and veteran of the Middle East desk, Miller sets out to find Al Rawi, a top ranking Iraqi general who knows the truth about the WMD program. Miller enlists the help of his translator Freddy (Khalid Abdalla) to negotiate his way through this dangerous city. But Poundstone also has his own covert hit squad led by a ruthless mercenary (Jason Isaacs) racing through bomb-ravaged Baghdad to try and get to the general first and silence him.
Oscar winning scriptwriter Brian Helgeland’s script is certainly critical of the Bush administration’s rush to war, and the enormous cost in civilian lives. His script makes the complex deceptions that led to the war relatively easy to understand and follow. While Green Zone contains elements of a fine conspiracy thriller, it is first and foremost an adrenaline charged action thriller that will leave audiences dizzy.
Green Zone re-unites Damon with director Paul Greengrass, the former documentary filmmaker who brings a sense of gritty realism and verisimilitude to his dramas. Greengrass previously gave us the riveting doco-drama United 93 and two Bourne sequels. He is also a political filmmaker who is critical of the US government’s position on the war on terror and the manufactured “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction.
The film contains his signature stylistic touches and cinema verite approach to staging action. The rapidly paced action and Barry Ackroyd’s hand held cameras take the audience right into the thick of things, and add a sense of energy and urgency to the material. Greengrass and his regular production designer Dominic Watkins have recreated the bomb-ravaged city of Baghdad of 2003 in Morocco, with great attention to detail.
With the Bourne franchise Damon reinvented himself as a credible action hero for the new century, and he is in fine heroic form here. He is well supported by solid performances from both Kinnear and Gleeson.
***1/2