Paul Greengrass's Green Zone takes us on a frenetic trip down memory lane — back to the beginning of the Iraq War. Soon after the 2003 invasion, soldier Roy Miller (Greengrass muse Matt Damon) starts to question Washington's intel on weapons of mass destruction, as he and his squad chase down bogus tipoffs and keep coming up empty-handed.
Miller's hunt for the truth soon entangles him with a compromised WSJ reporter (Amy Ryan), a loathsome bureaucrat (Greg Kinnear), a grizzled CIA operative (Brendan Gleeson), and a patriotic Iraqi (Khalid Abdalla). Adapted from Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Green Zone is a Greengrass hybrid, something between United 93 and the Bourne movies.
Although COPS-style visual tumult occasionally heightens the thrill, the film just doesn't stand still long enough to let the proper degree of suspense seep in. Despite the narrative whiplash, however, it's an engrossing (if fictionalized) answer to the question "How did we get here, exactly?"
