Matt Damon in a Thriller About the Iraq War
Director Paul Greengrass and actor Matt Damon previously teamed up to make The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, and they are reunited in Green Zone (2010), a thriller set in 2003 Baghdad. This is a big-budget movie that does a terrific job of looking realistic. The film embeds lots of action in a fictional story set against a factual backdrop.
Green Zone takes place within the first few weeks of the US-led invasion of Iraq, which was justified to the American and British citizenry on grounds that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed substantial quantities of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The film's hero is Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) of the US Army. He heads up a unit seeking the WMD, and when he is unable to locate any, he embarks upon a quest to find out what is going on.
Miller recruits a translator (Khalid Abdalla) off the streets of Baghdad and tries to meet with one of Saddam's top generals (Yigal Naor). Also, Miller gets some help from a CIA agent (Brendan Gleeson), but he quickly butts heads with a senior Department of Defense official (Greg Kinnear). Another person who might have a piece of the puzzle is a Wall Street Journal correspondent (Amy Ryan). Miller is in motion for almost the entire film, engaging in a frenetic series of chases, fights and shootouts.
Green Zone is an uneasy mix of political thriller and action movie, making it not completely satisfying as either. But it's superbly crafted, and for the most part it's entertaining and thought-provoking.
Bonus Materials
The Green Zone DVD comes with approximately 31 minutes of video extras. The 10-minute "Matt Damon: Ready for Action" is about the lead actor establishing rapport with the real-life veterans just back from Iraq and Afghanistan who appear in the movie, including Monty Gonzalez, the real-life soldier Damon's character was loosely based on. The nine-minute "Inside the Green Zone" is a behind-the-scenes featurette that shows director Paul Greengrass shooting a few scenes. There are also four deleted scenes with a total runtime of 12 1/2 minutes, and if you would have preferred the film to be more of a drama and less of an actioner, you'll want to watch them.
The DVD also provides a good feature-length audio commentary by director Paul Greengrass and lead actor Matt Damon. Greengrass says he was inspired to make the film after reading the nonfiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The commentators also talk about shooting in Spain and Morocco.
Release Date: June 22, 2010
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 55 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for Violence and Language