Green Zone: Movie Review

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Published: 3:20PM Thursday March 18, 2010

By tvnz.co.nz's Darren Bevan



Green Zone

Rating: 7/10

Cast: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Jason Isaacs

Director: Paul Greengrass

The team behind the successful run of Bourne movies have reunited for this thriller set in Iraq after the 2003 war.

Matt Damon is Captain Roy Miller, who's in charge of the hunt for WMDs - but every lead they're following turns out to be a dud; each time they're sent in, there's absolutely no trace of anything.

So with suspicions aroused over duff intelligence, Miller starts to follow his own leads - and finds himself slap bang in the middle of a major conspiracy.

But the situation begins to spiral out of control as Miller fails to realise how serious and widespread the conspiracy is.

Matt Damon continues to push his image as the dependably stoic and intelligent everyman that has seen him become a big screen success; Green Zone itself is a conspiracy thriller which takes a little while to unravel but if you have your wits about you, you can see where it's going - and how it will end.

Greg Kinnear and Brendan Gleeson provide good support as opposing factions of the conflict - although, I'd rather director Greengrass had eased up a little on the whole WMD issue; it still feels like there's a lot of anger to be worked through over whether there actually were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - and unfortunately towards the end of the film this becomes a major issue and nearly threatens to derail the tension which has been built up.

Green Zone is not a bad film - it does exactly what you'd expect and along with its jerky camera movements, there are some wonderfully taut and tense times as Miller finds himself out of his depth; throw in some great recreations of the post war Iraqi world and some very impressive chase scenes (including a final act edge of the seat chase) and you've got a good solid thriller.