Green Zone: Review

When he’s told to go find weapons of mass destruction, he goes on the hunt with the intelligence reports he’s given.  As with ‘Shutter Island’ and the re-teaming of DiCaprio and Scorsese, so that of Damon and Greengrass – actors and directors who can bring the best out of one another’s work. But when his unit’s searches come up empty again and again, he starts questioning the intelligence. He asks the question that the world was asking at the time: Where are all these WMDs we’ve heard so much about? 

amon, developing into a fine performer of wide-ranging ability, here plays a US soldier of almost the unknown variety since we know little about his past or who he is, other than he is Iraq doing what he believes is the right and just thing. Director Paul Greengrass goes hyper-political in his newest picture, and taking sides doesn’t suit him or his star, Matt Damon, well. The director’s strength, as seen in the second and third Jason Bourne films, is in showcasing an individual fighting back against shadowy forces. That same power was magnified into a group setting in Greengrass’ remarkably grounded, moving “United 93″ about the 9/11 passengers who changed the course of terrorist pilots. 

But in “Green Zone,” the filmmaker tells a black-and-white story inspired by historical fact (and Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone”), and the result is the worst kind of anticlimactic cinema. 

Greengrass brings us a quiet, thoughtful and mature film about the miserable war and paints a war more of conflicts within – the CIA (represented by Gleeson) against the military – than anything else and does it with an authentic, almost documentary, feel that adds power and insight to a fine drama.