The Green Zone

Starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear

I will be the first to admit that after seeing the preview for this movie and knowing that it Starred Damon and was helmed by the man that brought us 2 of the 3 Bourne Redundancy movies, I expected more of the same. Luckily that wasn't the case. If you can call this a factual account of the search for the WMD's in Iraq that lead to Saddam Hussein's eventual downfall, then that's what we get.
Damon is leading a team in Iraq to several empty locations that promised a cache of these so called weapons of mass destruction and after the 3rd strike, he gets a little upset. Our hero starts to ask questions that no one wants to hear, questions like "Who is our intel source?" And "Why does he suck?"
The only major difference between the look of this film and the other Bourne movies is that Damon gets his ass kicked a few times here and isn't nearly as cool as he thinks he is. We are however treated to the same style of camera work that frankly ruined the Bourne franchise for me. From out of focus shots to blurry and shaky hand held garbage, movies like this are an epileptics nightmare. I fully get that this so called "style" is used to put the viewer in the action and make it all the more realistic, but in that regard it simply doesn't work. I'm sorry but there is one scene that starts off out of focus and that doesn't make me think I'm right there in the thick of it all. It makes me think that you made a gigantic mistake.
All of my griping about the technical disaster here aside, the story is rather engaging. From the Iraqi's point of view to the average American soldier thinking that something just isn't quite right, we gain several perspectives as to the atmosphere of the time and the course of events that lead us to 7 years later still cleaning up the poorly run campaign/war that began with "Shock and Awe"
For war nerds and history buffs, this movie works. For the action fan, it works just as well. But for people that would rather watch a cleanly filmed and frankly better war movie such as The Hurt Locker, maybe you should skip this one.

Rating 2 lousy intel reports out of 5

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