Film of the Week

Brains and Brawn from the 
Bourne Team



 Green Zone
114mins, 15A
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Staring: Matt Damon, Brendan Gleeson, Jason Issacs,Greg Kinnear

Paul Greengrass the director of the new action thriller Green Zone has often been referred to as a director of two different kinds of film. There is the intelligent and political Bloody Sunday and United 93 on one hand and on the other there are the blockbuster Bourne films which have redefined what audiences expect from an action film.

So when he presents a new film the inevitable question is, which Greengrass has shown up? Thankfully with this breathless and kinetic film the answer is both.

Green Zone follows Chief Roy Miller (Matt Damon) just after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 as he is charged with finding the smoking gun of WMDs that were used as justification for the war. When he and his team come up empty yet again he begins to question the veracity of the intelligence he is being given and guided by Brendan Gleeson’s shifty CIA operative he goes off mission to find the answers to why he went to war in the first place.

Miller is no Bourne and is as frail as any other soldier on the ground but just like Bourne he is a man who needs to get his questions answered. Interspersed with the exceptionally well staged action those questions are asked almost of the audience as culpability is pointed directly at a US administration that was too far in to be distracted by trivial things such as justification and the journalists who failed to check their sources information or question their motives.

The films brilliance lies in the way its political and critical approach to its subject matter air woven into the story which never sacrifices pace or the clarity of the story in order to lay blame but rather it uses action and intelligence to deliver it all in an entertaining and accessible whole.

There really is no better director working today that understands action cinema and Greengrass  uses handheld cameras to place us in the heart of the events while never allowing the jumping and spinning to undermine our sense of what is going on. An extended chase that takes up the last third is dazzling with its expanding scale yet never loses sight of Miller and his increasingly desperate mission.

Full credit must go to Matt Damon who invests Miller with a humanity that is at odds with the just doing a job attitude of most of the soldiers and allows the film to ask the tough questions without being preachy. Damon is ably supported by a slew of characters actors such as Greg Kinnear and Jason Isaacs sporting an epic moustache as the ruthless Special Forces commander.

Even without its political aspects the film would be wildly successful as the plot and action make the two hour running time feel like half that. Green Zone treads a fine line between fact and fiction but by doing so it makes the controversies surrounding the war wholly accessible and that is quite an achievement as it lives up to its blockbuster with brains tagline.

LS