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Visual:		7.0
Audio:		8.0
Acting:		5.0
Writing:		6.0
Score:		7.0

Director(s):	Paul Greengrass
Writer(s):	Brian Helgeland
Starring:	Amy Ryan • Greg Kinnear • Jason Isaacs • Khalid Abdalla • Matt Damon
Genre:	Thriller • War
Release Date:	March 12, 2010
Rated:

Matt Damon is back toting rifles, having close-quarter brawls and engaging in shaky, blurry footwork. But this is not so much a fourth Bourne or “Bourne in Iraq” as it is Bourne-Prime. The ingredients of a post-9/11 secret agent like Jason Bourne—all the paranoia and distrust that provide the urgency of director Paul Greengrass’ two sequels—now become the main course.

Watching the trailers and spots for this movie, you’ll hear plenty of chatter about the CIA hiding things, people dying, a mysterious source named “Magellan,” bringing a General in, and a race to bust a conspiracy wide open. All of these accurately list the plot points of the movie, but shrewdly avoid the context of the story—such as the conspiracy being the Bush administration’s lies about Iraq having WMDs. A fairly important context, wouldn’t you say?

Being a financially successful director with an A-List international movie star certainly helps to go places smaller Iraq War films like recent Academy Award winner The Hurt Locker couldn’t. With a huge studio-backed budget, Green Zone doesn’t stick to nondescript alleys and deserts. More than once, we get amazing aerial views of war-torn Baghdad, complete with surviving landmarks. The chaotic pre-credits sequence, as a matter of fact, ends with a stirring skyline shot of the night of March 20, 2003: the night Baghdad lit up like Christmas. Shock and awe.

The action picks up several weeks later, as Damon’s Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller and his MET unit keep coming up empty at supposed WMD sites. Sensing a disconnect between what he sees on the ground and what is being reported back home, Miller begins to probe the legitimacy of the Intel they’ve been given.

The screenplay by Brian Helgeland (who’s usually good at having fun but spotty when being serious) checks off all the things liberals criticize about the Bush administration: the lies, the media manipulation, the use of torture, detainment of innocent Iraqi civilians, ignorance of local political strifes, extreme incompetence in the rebuilding process… It’s as if somebody saw the documentary No End in Sight and thought it needed a better ending, one with a drag-out shootout and a helicopter explosion. Hard to argue with that, but the generic Tom Clancy stuff distracts from the angry anti-Bush finger-pointing, which at least have some zest to it. It’s obvious that that’s what interests Greengrass anyway, and it shows in the film’s momentum.

Instead of naming names, this movie is populated by thinly veiled figures. Greg Kinnear’s pencil-pushing Pentagon slimeball acts like a stand-in for Paul Bremer. Amy Ryan’s Wall Street Journal reporter is basically disgraced New York Times reporter Judith Miller, whose unsubstantiated reports of Saddam Hussein’s WMD program was used by Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice to justify the invasion of Iraq. Green Zone exists in a strange parallel universe where the events are roughly the same—a subplot has Kinnear trying to reinstall an exiled Iraqi politician to hold the country together, and we know how that turned out—but the people are supposedly fictional (except for George W. Bush, that is, who appears as archival footage of his “Mission Accomplished” speech).

In United 93, Greengrass showed an extracurricular effort for authenticity by casting actual FAA and airline employees, some playing themselves. He shows comparable effort on Green Zone: Matt Damon aside, the US Army soldiers on-screen are all veterans recently home from Afghanistan and Iraq, helping to maintain the legitimacy of the portrayals.

Even a critically applauded film like The Hurt Locker found itself under scrutiny by military personnel for its unrealistic depiction of the EOD team's roguish and isolated actions. I’m no expert, obviously, but it doesn’t seem to be the case here. Matt Damon is never alone for most of the movie. As is the habit over there, for every situation, Miller would go in with no less than a dozen people watching his back. It reduces the element of danger, which are usually amped up to give lone heroes like Jason Bourne some suspenseful mortality, but it’s not a significant loss, seeing how Green Zone is less run-and-gun, more talky political neck-wringing.

What happens in the film is a fictional account that winks and nods at real events and real people, continually unsure of its own audacity. Perhaps Greengrass wanted to make a damning historical thriller like his drop-dead brilliant Bloody Sunday and United 93, but found himself unable to fill those shoes because the circumstances are too broad and far-reaching. Or maybe not. Maybe this is what he wanted all along—though that would be disappointingly oblique of him.