Green Zone

Awww … can’t I just get another Bourne movie? Green Zone was in no way a bad movie but it was just another combat in the Middle East story. It looked and felt like a Bourne movie with a weak plot and an agenda. No matter how hard they try, these movies always feel like I’m being preached to.

There were positives to Green Zone. The casting alone made this movie worthwhile. Matt Damon fits right in to these roles as the righteous man trying to expose injustice. I compared this to Bourne but outside of the similar skill sets, Miller was much more of a soldier who actually spoke in full sentences and got his ass kicked from time to time. The other major characters were all populated with talented actors like Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, and Jason Isaacs. Isaacs even grew a sweet fu manchu mustache for the occasion … thank you for that. Along with the cast, Greengrass’s style is perfect for whenever action gets frantic. And since the majority of Green Zone is Damon chasing after someone, the movie just flies by.

If you can just turn you mind off and just enjoy the ride, Green Zone is a solid wartime action movie. But if you want to be engrossed in the plot, look elsewhere. None of the revelations were strong, the identity of Magellan was obvious, Kinnear’s shady government bureaucrat was nothing more than the standard shady government bureaucrat, and worse of all the shock at the climax was telegraphed to the point where I just wanted it to happen so we could move on. On top of all that is just my general unease with sitting there and getting taught about the evils of American actions in the Middle East. Can we at least wait until this is a historical event and not a current event?

Green Zone was a completely serviceable soldiers in action movie. But when it's Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass it should be more than that. Well, that's why some movies come out in March.

7 out of 10