Green Zone (15)

Alison Rowat's Review

Instead of taking its name from the US enclave in Iraq, Paul Greengrass’s blistering drama ought to be called The Bourne Zone, such is the influence of young Jason on the film’s style.

Matt Damon plays Miller, an American soldier hunting for those slippery WMDs in the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion. Hitting dead ends everywhere he begins to wonder, alongside Brendan Gleeson’s CIA man, about the real reasons for taking over the country.

Light on politics and with a plot thinner than a politician’s excuses, Green Zone is at base a red hot action movie with Damon on ferociously energetic form .

Paul Greenwood's Review

Set in 2003 just after the invasion of Iraq, Matt Damon leads a unit of coalition soldiers tasked with finding WMDs. They consistently come up empty-handed and begin to suspect dodgy intelligence, but those in command insist the intel is good.

But if Damon can bring in the general who can prove there are no WMDs, it will turn the war on its head. Though obviously sharing a director and star with the Bourne series, Green Zone is sufficiently different to be its own entity, both in character and plot.

Damon is superb, like Jason Bourne but less grumpy and less superhuman, and therefore more believable. Seven years after the fact, the film is slightly covering old ground and not really telling us anything we didn't already know about WMDs but the great skill of director Paul Greengrass is his ability to drop us into a situation and immediately establish the stakes and geography and execute the sequence with consummate ease.

In its focus on the people fighting the war and those covering up their mistakes, it provides an intelligent and muscular thriller that still has plenty to say about our involvement, while also delivering a pacy, exciting action film.