Review of Green Zone

The Detroit News

There's such a stain of truth to "Green Zone," the new Iraq War thriller starring Matt Damon, that it can be hard to watch.

Yes, you might be able to turn off your mind and soak up the film as a fast-paced conspiracy flick that plays out on and off the field of battle. Heaven knows there's plenty of action and intrigue to be had here.

But director Paul Greengrass ("The Bourne Ultimatum," "United 93") has a lot more on his mind.

Working from a script by Brian Helgeland ("Mystic River," "Man on Fire") that employs the nonfiction reporting from Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone," Greengrass is using a (barely) fictional story to expose, or at least question, the truth about the war's origins.

The result shares a strange spirit with Quentin Tarantino's recent "Inglourious Basterds" in that it rewrites history. But where Tarantino went for the outlandish, Greengrass sticks so close to reality that it burns.

Matt Damon stars as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, charged immediately after the invasion with finding the WMDs -- weapons of mass destruction -- that were the supposed reason the U.S. attacked Iraq. Needless to say, he is thoroughly frustrated in his search.

When he begins to openly question the "intelligence" that keeps sending him and his men to risk their lives looking through empty buildings, Miller is told to pipe down and follow orders.

But a CIA agent named Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) takes Miller seriously. And he knows that top-level bureaucrat Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) has been feeding false stories about WMDs to a Wall Street Journal reporter (Amy Ryan) for months, stoking fires for the war.

Brown also knows that Poundstone is trying to get an edict handed down that would dissolve the Iraqi army, even though that army could be used to police and unify the conquered country.

So Brown sends Miller off on a mission to make contact with a high-ranking Iraq Army general (Igal Naor) and bring him in for negotiations.

Unfortunately, Poundstone also wants the general, but for very different reasons.

Every nightmare memory of the early war pops up here. The manipulation of the gullible media, the torture and senseless imprisonment, the looting and chaos in the streets, and mostly the vast cluelessness that America brought to the table with few people speaking the language or knowing the country's customs.

Early on, Miller is given information about a clandestine meeting by an Iraqi citizen named Freddie (Khalid Abdallah), and Freddie stays on as Miller's interpreter, exposed to all the wrong-headed moves his conquerors are making, seeing the lawless and usually pointless violence being committed against his people and country.

He's an innocent dragged into a bizarre battle for his hometown among different American factions. And you can feel his frustration and sense of powerlessness beginning to boil.

Much has been made of the apolitical approach of last year's Iraq War film "The Hurt Locker." Well, Greengrass will have none of that, and the crass, ego-centric incompetence of the Bush administration and America's war machine is his target here.

This is a movie that's filled with shoot-outs, back-handed deals, chase scenes and heroism. But it's mostly a film about the abuse of power.

Those hoping to see "Bourne Goes to Iraq" may be disappointed. Miller is not a fleshed-out character, just a decent soldier trying to do what's right, and he gets his butt kicked early on. Jason Bourne never got his butt kicked.

But Greengrass is the current king of shaky camera action and quick edits, and he delivers a rousing action movie at the same time he's making a political exposé.

It's never easy to look back on mistakes -- especially mistakes of this magnitude -- that cost lives. But it's important to face them.

"Green Zone" hits hard and doesn't forgive. It plays out like fiction, and in some ways it is. But in too many ways, it's not.