Green Zone

In this military thriller Matt Damon plays Roy Miller, a Chief Warrant Officer with the US Army tasked with raiding Baghdad bases intelligence sources have named as WMD sites. Disillusioned after several false leads, Miller begins to investigate the source of this intelligence. He makes an important discovery and finds himself involved in an internecine battle between Pentagon and CIA officials with different ideas about how best to deal with the aftermath of the fall of Saddam. Eventually he manages to catch up with the supposed source of the WMD intelligence and all hell breaks loose.

Comparisons with The Hurt Locker are inevitable, and Green Zone comes out of that with honours but without victory. Although the handheld, frantic action-chasing-fighting sequences are engaging it never reaches the white-knuckle level that The Hurt Locker manages throughout. And in some ways the fact that Green Zone does have a point to make detracts from its worth as a movie in its own right. The Hurt Locker had an easier job, its narrative free from any obligation to engage with the worth or otherwise of the war itself and therefore able to keep the tension constantly ratcheted up. It's hard to imagine a better way of making the political points that Green Zone manages in under two hours of film - and the story ticks along, never becoming too clunky or trite. Given the subject matter, that's quite an achievement. Just don't expect to be blown away.