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MATT DAMON plays Army Chief Warrant Officer, Roy Miller  In Green Zone.

Matt Damon Superb Searching For WMDs in Iraq War Drama

By Maggie Scott

When asked, many people will say, “It doesn’t really matter, now, why we got into it; what’s important is how we get out of it.”  They’re talking, of course, of Iraq.  We’re still hopeful.  But, after seven years, Iraq is a chronic pain we’ve learned to endure. Most of us in silence.

Unless, of course, you have someone who is directly involved and in danger, has suffered the consequences of involvement there, or may soon be involved.  It has been one of the most extensively covered wars in history, by most media; and the average person could easily admit to suffering, guiltily, from defensive ignorance in response to the constant barrage of news—most sorrowfully often of suicide bombings—from Iraq.

Not until The Hurt Locker had there been an important “fictional” film about the war.  Critically acclaimed, the Academy Award winner focused most powerfully and poignantly on the men who put their lives on the line doing their duty as they understand it as soldiers.

Now comes the film Green Zone.

While it also features a soldier doing his duty as he eventually comes to question it, the story (script by Brian Helgeland), based on an investigative book by one Rajiv Chandrasekaran, has a decidedly political slant to it, inescapable in hindsight to the events that followed “shock and awe.”

The troops have gone in because the American public has been told that Hussein’s regime developed and stockpiled weapons of mass destruction—or WMD’s.  The Army troops who hit Baghdad ground pushing through the initial chaos of looters and snipers are intent on one thing—to find those weapons.

Led by Army Chief Warrant Officer, Roy Miller (Matt Damon), the men of the 85th Unit come away empty-handed; and not for the first time.  As the leader of men risking their lives during these missions to find WMD’s, Miller can’t just shrug it off. To him, it’s simple: “The reason we go to war always matters.”

He’s not the only one anxious to get answers about intelligence reports that have led soldiers on a wild goose chase.  A reporter with the Wall Street Journal (Amy Ryan) confronts Pentagon Special Intelligence Unit Agent Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), only to get stonewalled. Eventually, this agent will throw considerable weight around to keep Miller from getting to the one man who can blow the architects of the spuriously waged campaign for the invasion out of the water.

This man is a member of the Ba’ath Party. He’s in hiding waiting for reassurance that the Americans will offer a “deal…a place in the new Iraq.”  Helping Miller get to that man is a savvy CIA agent (Brendan Gleeson) and a local the Americans name “Freddy” (Khalid Abdalla).  He’s putting himself in harm’s way “for his country,” as he did during the Iran/Iraq war.  But, how far is he interested in seeing America become involved in re-shaping his country?

Director Paul Greengrass skillfully engulfs the viewer from the first frames of the film in the courage and determination of troops carrying out their mission amidst chaos and peril that looks and feels like footage from an imbed crew.

Unquestioningly on their side, the viewer becomes fixated on the character responsible for keeping his men out of harm’s way and needing the truth to make that happen.  While he questions authorities of his government over that truth, he is not anti-government.  Wrong information can  get his men killed, it’s as simple as that.

A rapid-fire pace, sustained and heightened by superior editing, ensures a thoroughly gripping experience capped by a performance by Damon of sterling quality.  A Universal Pictures release, rated R for language and violence.

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