Truth, Lies, & Action In The 'Green Zone'

With the team up of star Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass having proven successful with The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, it perhaps isn't surprising that the two would team-up again so soon after what was initially seen as the final film in the Bourne franchise. What the pair made was a film that dealt with many of the same themes of distrust and questionable US government motives. The difference? This one was set firmly in the recent past in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. That film was Green Zone and the results were compelling.

Green Zone is on the surface a fairly straightforward thriller. Damon plays Roy Miller, a US Army Chief Warrant Officer leading a team around Iraq in search of the WMDs that were the cause of the invasion. Miller's team comes up empty again and again causing the soldier to raise questions with his superiors. His hunt for answers leads him through a series of characters ranging from a Defense Department Special Intelligence official, a CIA officer, a journalist who did the initial reporting on WMDs, and a series of Iraqis. It also takes in those things audiences have come to expect from Greenglass and Damon: chase sequences, firefights, and a driving narrative.

The film is anchored though by a solid cast. Like with the Bourne films, Damon's performance as Miller is the heart of the film as he takes the viewer along on a journey across the width and breadth of the early days of the conflict from battling it out against snipers at a suspected WMD site to inside the titular Green Zone where American officials are trying to determine the future of Iraq back onto the streets for the film's conclusion. Damon portrays Miller as a good soldier trying to do his duty and, in the process of doing so, discovering some less than appealing truths along the way and it's that everyman quality Damon has which sells it solidly.

The supporting cast is solid as well. They range from Greg Kinnear as a Defense Department official Poundstone who is trying to dictate the future of Iraq from inside the Green Zone, Amy Ryan as the journalist trying to get the scoop of interviewing the WMD source, Brendan Gleeson as the local CIA chief, an almost unrecognizable Jason Issacs as special forces Major Briggs, and Khalid Abdalla as Iraqi who ends up becoming Miller's translator. None of these roles (or those of the members of Miller's team) are especially showy but together they present a compelling cast of characters that populate the world of the film.

It's that world that is the soul of the film. Greengrass and screenwriter Brian Helgeland use the thriller plot to explore the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath. It highlights the incredible disconnect between the reality of what was happening in the streets and those making decisions inside the comfort of the Green Zone (and by extension in Washington as displayed in one scene early on in the film). While the film takes cues both from journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book Imperial Life In The Emerald City and the later revelations about the source of WMD claims and the planning for a new Iraq, it remains a solid thriller albeit one that beautifully illustrates the differences between the reality and the perception in the early months of the war.

Perhaps no scene better illustrates this than one approximately midway through the film. Damon's Miller visits the Green Zone decked out in full desert camo uniform with a couple of his men in tow to speak with Gleeson's CIA chief. They arrive only to find themselves standing by the pool at the Republican Palace that was until recently the preferred residence of Saddam Hussein. Except it has the air, not of a war zone, but some vacation resort with people drinking beer and eating pizza as beautiful women in bikinis walk by.

It's a startling moment for character and viewer alike and it highlights nicely how the situation in Iraq became the way it did.