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Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass are together again, but not on another Jason Bourne adventure. Rather, the star-director tandem has teamed up once more for Green Zone (2010), an action-thriller that casts Damon as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller. Set in 2003, right after America has invaded Iraq, Miller and his team are on the ground and hunting high and low for weapons of mass destruction.
The problem? They're not finding any, and Miller doesn't understand why. Every bit of intel pointed to its existence. Worse, certain people who don't wear uniforms order Miller's fellow soldiers to take him out when he comes to close to the truth. And with that, Miller goes rogue, kicking, blasting, stabbing, and basically doing everything and anything necessary both to survive and to expose those who deserve exposing.
Far, far, far from a love letter to former president George W. Bush or his inner circle, Green Zone is a rapid-fire political thriller sure to irk the world's conservatives and those that believe America was beholden to topple Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to post-9/11 Iraq. Greengrass clearly suggests that there was an agenda in play, with the American public manipulated -- with those dodgy reports of WMD's supposedly stockpiled throughout Iraq -- to support the war. It's old news given a fresh twist. That twist? Plopping a sane, honorable soldier into the mix and letting him go all Rambo in an effort to expose what he sees as a series of cover-ups and acts of corruption. That is, in many ways, at the core of Green Zone, which mirrors elements of reality (in familiar situations and names that are meant to ring a bell, etc.), and heightens the tension by employing its director's penchant for shaky hand-held camerawork and frenetic editing.
In addition to Damon, the film also stars Brendan Gleeson (as a veteran, old-school CIA agent), Greg Kinnear (as a Pentagon-based administration suit), Amy Ryan (as a Wall Street Journal reporter), Khalid Abdalla (as an English-speaking Iraqi informant), and Jason Isaacs (as a Special Forces soldier). Scripted by the busy Brian Helgeland, who also penned Mystic River (2003), The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3 (2009), and the upcoming Angelina Jolie vehicle Salt (2010), Green Zone was, according to the press notes, "inspired" by Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a non-fiction book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. War films, especially Iraq-centric stories, haven't exactly been all the rage at the box office the past few years, but with Greengrass behind the camera and Damon kicking butt as he crusades for the truth, Green Zone just might make some serious green.
