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Iraq and roll in 'Green Zone'

Determined Damon finds action in search for weapons of mass destruction

Last Updated: 9:15 AM, March 12, 2010

Posted: 1:56 AM, March 12, 2010

Comments: 7

Lou Lumenick
Blog: Movies

GREEN ZONE Bourne again. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity). At the E-Walk, the Lincoln Square, others.

Master director Paul Greengrass’ “Green Zone” reunites him with Matt Damon for what’s essentially another Jason Bourne thriller that entertainingly — if sometimes uneasily — mixes fact and speculation in a way that’s already raised the ire of some on the right as well as on the left.

Damon is playing an Army chief warrant officer charged with finding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) shortly after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Only his unit — like all of the other American soldiers — finds nothing in any of the sites he’s been ordered to search.

Ignoring the chain of command, Damon’s character decides to personally investigate why he’s been given bad intelligence.

Matt Damon goes all Bourne on us as an Army officer out for the truth in the politically muddled “Green Zone.”

Encounters with a fed-up CIA agent (Brendan Gleeson) and a naive reporter (Amy Ryan) lead him to suspect that a slimy Defense Department official (Greg Kinnear) cooked the WMD reports to support the Bush administration’s decision to invade.

This sends our hero in search of a Baathist general who supposedly told the official there were no WMD — and offered to cut a deal with the US, which instead dissolved the Iraqi army.

Arguably the most expert action director working today, Greengrass offers a series of pulse-pounding chases as Damon pursues the general. All the while, he is being chased by a Special Forces unit, which has orders to take Damon out before he exposes the truth.

The first Iraq war movie to hit theaters after “The Hurt Locker” won the Best Picture Oscar certainly doesn’t soft-pedal its liberal politics the way that movie does.

My colleague Kyle Smith, writing an opinion column in The Post earlier this week, condemned “Green Zone” as a “slander” against America.

With all due respect, the politics of this US-UK-French co-production distributed by Universal (whose parent company is the major defense contractor GE) are as incoherent as "The Kingdom," a right-leaning war fantasy released by the same studio in 2007.

From a liberal point of view, the Brian Helgeland script, "inspired" by a nonfiction book, wimps out by failing to name real names, quite possibly because of legal considerations.

Ryan's character, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, is a thinly disguised version of controversial New York Times reporter Judith Miller, while Kinnear is clearly based on Paul Bremer, the American official charged with reorganizing the Iraqi government.

I don't think any of this is going to matter to most audiences.

Greengrass, who also directed the superb docudrama "United 93," effectively employs US veterans to play soldiers in the exciting action sequences, some of the best of their kind since "Black Hawk Down."

Politics aside and purely as a piece of genre moviemaking, "Green Zone" is a solid example of a political paranoia thriller.

lou.lumenick@nypost.com

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Pink Toilet Paper

03/12/2010 2:31 PM

You guys conveniently leave out one thing****
Sept 11********** now is now but then was then****
We never had a retort to Beirut bombing/Cole attack// hostages held for 444 days under the weak azz Carter//

It escalated and escalated/// its like a bully takin your lunch money and everyone in the school yard see it so they start to take too???
Yeah no WMD and yah 12 Saudis on the plane//but we HAD to make some kind of show of strength///
I live in NYC I almost died also/did you??

Were we not attacked for 8 years?Have we not not thwarted several attacks? Did not the subway of England get attacked/the hotel where Americans stay in India(if im correct)so its not all cut &dry

Its not all like some kind of multiple choice test on a piece of paper after the blood of the dead has dried off the parchment!!!Not that simple???? Violence works/just ask the Mafia
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amstaffbru

03/12/2010 1:07 PM

Where is Joe McCarthy when you need him?
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oldster12

03/12/2010 11:46 AM

Book -- It's too easy. some folks just lap up the kool aide > see : Curveball. Amb. Powells UN War making speech. note German Govern told the Bush Admin -- Bush, NOT Clinton. timing important-- that Curveball was fabricating stories to enhance his refugee status.
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Booky301

03/12/2010 11:33 AM

Oh, the Bush Administration didn't lie to scare a country into war....Nooo really?

On September 7, 2002 President Bush met with Tony Blair at Camp David. They were quizzed by reporters before the meeting on the subject of Iraq’s nuclear capability. “A report came out of the Atomic -- the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don't know what more evidence we need,” the President told them. Wow, pretty scary stuff, only six months from possessing a nuclear weapon! And emphatic too: “I don’t know what more evidence we need.” There was a problem however. Had the IAEA come up with a new and current report about Saddam’s nuclear capability? It might seem so, yet no reporters asked for clarification. Was this a current report or an old one? Later, the White House clarified that the President was referring to a report made by the IAEA in 1998, four years earlier. Okay, the report was not current but there was another problem. The IAEA said no such 1998 report ever existed. "There's never been a report like that issued from this agency,” said there chief spokesperson in Vienna. What could be the explanation? The White House clarified its clarification. The President had been referring to an IAEA report from 1991, eleven years ago before the Gulf War to justify a current threat.

“I don’t know what more evidence we need.”
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Pink Toilet Paper

03/12/2010 9:45 AM

I loved his other Bourne movies but will not go see this based on the premise of our soldiers killing our own.
Gee Matt must have cringed when America embraced the Hurt Locker about real soldiers in a real war giving their lives&limbs!!!!!!!!!!
Gee a bad guy cant just be a bad guy anymore. No WMD gee what about mass genocide&imprisonment&raping of their own??
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Constance

03/12/2010 5:50 AM

An anti-war hollywood flick? Nooo really...