Green Zone encapsulates filmmaker Paul Greengrass even better than his superior Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum. Using the shady political machinations that led to the Iraq War as a catalyst for an atypical action movie, Greengrass, who also directed the outstanding 9/11 docudrama United 93, again manages to combine intellectual filmmaking and kinetic moviemaking. The resulting two-hour film retains its heady outrage while being much more exciting than the majority of Iraq War dramas.

Matt Damon

Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is scouring Baghdad for those elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. The administration, represented by a mealy-mouthed bureaucrat played by Greg Kinnear, needs the WMD found to convince the American people and the rest of the world that our intervention in Iraq was justified.

Miller just wants to do the job right, and when the supposedly solid, vetted intel proves wrong time and again, the dedicated soldier looks into the sources. His brief investigation leads him to a frustrated CIA agent, Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), who specializes in the Middle East and believes the U.S. is going about the democratization of Iraq all wrong. Miller’s time in the Green Zone (the common name for Baghdad’s International Zone) also uncovers the Wall Street Journal reporter, Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), who peddled the administration’s WMD B.S. and their Iraq insider, code-named “Magellan.”

But the more Miller uncovers, the less he likes what he finds. Hot on the trail of the "Jack of Clubs," Saddam’s number-one general, Muhammad Al-Rawi (Igal Naor), Miller himself becomes the prey, hunted by his own country’s Special Forces, led by an extremely tough Jason Isaacs (The Patriot).

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) adapted Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, but the film feels as much a Bourne-ization of Charles Ferguson’s terrifyingly enlightening documentary No End in Sight. Greengrass and Helgeland simply add water to that film’s talking points—lack of a provisional government, de-Ba’athification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military—and, after some vigorous stirring courtesy of Greengrass’ trademark shaky-cam cinematography, they have an intelligent action movie ready for easy audience consumption.

Damon simply makes the film go down that much more smoothly. He retains his tattered humanity and integrity while the leadership he once counted on crumbles under its own corrupt corpulence. As Miller says, the “reasons [we go to war] matter to me.” When Green Zone ends, you will, hopefully, realize the reasons we went to war matter to you, too; you just didn’t notice until the kick-ass action movie was over.

Drew Wheeler