"Green Zone" is out on DVD: your purchase in part benefits Levantine Cultural Center
All it took to make me want to see Green Zone was the New York Post's review. The unabashedly fascist tabloid, which serves as a generally reliable counterindicator around my house, called the Matt Damon Iraq-war actioner "a $100 million slime job that conjures up a fantastically distorted leftist picture of the war" and "one of the most egregiously anti-American movies ever released by a major studio." I took this to mean that Paul Greengrass's film was a well-made, engaging piece of work that dared to speak some well-proven (i.e. Fox-denied) truths about U.S. foreign policy. And boy, was I right.

Damon stars as Officer Roy Miller, leader of a U.S. Army squad tasked with smoking out possible WMD locations around Iraq in 2003. When one by one the sites turn out to be duds, Miller begins to question the intelligence through which the alleged sites are being identified.

Following the trail of rotten bread crumbs (and putting his own rear-end on the line in the process) Miller discovers that the U.S. government's ultra-secret informant is a high-ranking Baathist general—the same one U.S. forces are desperately seeking with a kill order in hand. Miller makes it his business to track down the elusive general and find out whether he lied about the WMD's existence, or if something far more sinister is afoot.

The answer, of course, is by now extensively documented: the American government deliberately ignored its own inside sources and lied about the WMD, conjuring up phantom informants and false evidence in order to justify the invasion. Along the way, it was abetted (knowingly or not) by the American press, which propagated the official story without ever really vetting the sources. In Green Zone, Miller stands in for all the truth-seekers that helped uncover this conspiracy, as well as those members of the American public who were deeply outraged by it. (Sadly, the latter group did not number enough to boot Bush & Co. out of office in 2004.)

Amy Ryan as Wall Street Journal reporter Lawrie Dayne with Matt Damon as Chief MillerBrian Helgeland's screenplay, though riddled with some flat bits of dialogue, avoids preachiness and keeps the politics well-wrapped in action-thriller skin. Springboarding from Rajiv Chandrasekaran‘s nonfiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Helgeland paints a fascinating portrait of warring factions—not among the Iraqi masses but within the American occupying forces. The main grudge match here is between Department of Defense point man Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) and CIA Baghdad Bureau chief Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson, minus the British accent). Each wants to conduct the restructuring of Iraq according to his own agenda, and Miller is caught square in the crossfire. In one particularly stunning scene, Poundstone and his supporting army of D.O.D. suits march into the CIA provisional headquarters and effectively browbeat Brown into coughing up a potentially damning piece of evidence. Miller's bewilderment ("I thought we were all on the same side!") only draws the most cynical of responses from Brown: "Don't be naïve."

Greengrass directs with an astoundingly assured hand. The frenetic, zoom-happy camera style of his Bourne films is balanced with masterfully precise editing that keeps the action fluid and consistently coherent. Damon, Gleeson and Kinnear turn in impressive, understated performances. The supporting cast, including a large bloc of Middle Easterners, is very solid; the two standouts are Israeli star Yigal Naor (House of Saddam, The Infidel) as the enigmatic general Al-Rawi, and the always-excellent Khalid Abdalla (Kite Runner, United 93) as Freddy, a Baghdad local reluctantly serving as Miller's translator. (Real-life decorated Iraq vet and anti-war playwright Sean Huze is featured as a Miller subordinate.)

Green Zone is that rare Iraq-war pic that treats Iraqis as something more than moving targets, giving them emotional life and a sophisticated voice (mainly through the character of Freddy). It also dares to actually question the sovereignty of the so-called Coalition Forces and wonder out loud if the people of Iraq shouldn't be allowed to determine their own fate. Even more brazenly, it takes dead aim at what films like The Hurt Locker labor to sweep under the rug: the motives for this war in particular and for war in general. "Of course it fucking matters!" shouts a frustrated Miller into Poundstone's face late in the film. "The reasons we go to war always matter! It's all that matters!"

I don't expect the New York Post to feel the same way; but I wish that more of the American public did.

Green Zone is just out on DVD.

Omid Arabian is the Levantine Review's film editor.