The Green Zone

The Green Zone is a thriller. From the very first scene my body tensed with excitement and I never unclenched for the next hour and fifty-five minutes. Between the driven story telling and the fast paced editing, this political thriller kept me interested until the very end. Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) is a master of espionage.

Matt Damon (The Bourne Supremacy) plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller. He is in charge of a team looking for weapons of mass destruction. When the film opens he arrives at the scene where a group of locals are looting and carrying things away. According to his intelligence, inside the building are weapons, chemical agents, and nerve toxins. He must secure the building before the locals trigger something. The Army has yet to secure the location but Miller can not wait. He risks his life and those of his men to take out a sniper and enter the building only to find it empty. This is the third time in a row and Miller is beginning to ask questions. Where is this intelligence coming from?

Back at headquarters, he draws the wrath of his superiors when he questions the intelligence source. But a local CIA operative (Brendan Gleeson - In Bruges) confirms that he is on to something. They exchange information and begin to dig into the information’s source. This flushes out Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear-Little Miss Sunshine) and he tries to warn them off. Matt Damon’s Miller has just put himself into the middle of a power-play. Only his integrity and good conscience will tell him the right thing to do.

I found Matt Damon totally convincing as an Army officer. He took risks, but earned the loyalty of his men. When one of his men questioned his decision, instead of ordering him into submission, he respected his view and divided the team for effectiveness. He knew that he was on to something, but he was tired of risking his team on bad intelligence. He was there to save lives.

Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) plays the newspaper reporter who was duped into writing the articles regarding the weapons of mass destruction. As the search continues with no results, she begins to suspect that she may have been used. By contacting Miller for information, the pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together, but will it be in time? The future of an entire country is at stake.

Although this is a fictionalized account based on the book, Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, I came away from this film with a little more understanding. America was fed so many lies it will take years to understand this mess. But if you go back to the character of Freddy played by Khalid Abdalla, you’ll realize that a lot of good people live in Iraq and they are fighting for their way of life. It is up to us to right a wrong and give these people a chance. Freedom is never free.

Rating: First Run A first class political thriller