Directed by: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Khalid Abdalla, Yigal Naor, Amy Ryan
Rating: R

Amy Ryan portrays a newspaper reporter and Matt Damon is a military officer in Iraq in Green Zone. (Courtesy photo)

On the surface, Green Zone would seem to be a big draw. Like The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, it’s an intense action movie directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Matt Damon. Yet audiences mostly stayed away on its opening weekend, and though I found Green Zone to be involving from start to finish, I can’t really argue with them.

Green Zone is doubly cursed: first, no matter what Hollywood tries, people simply don’t seem inclined to watch movies centered on the Iraq war. Second, people don’t seem inclined to watch fictions that behave as if they’re true stories. When it becomes clear just what Green Zone is about, you can’t help but ask, “Is this really how it really happened?” When you reach the inevitable conclusion—“No, stupid, obviously this isn’t what really happened”—you can’t help but ask, “Then what’s the point?” And if you’re talking to yourself this much during an action movie, it’s not a good sign.

Damon plays Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, leading his team through Baghdad in the first weeks of the Iraq war in search of weapons of mass destruction. When they keep coming up short, Miller questions the quality of the intelligence. That doesn’t go down well with his superiors, or the Pentagon’s local head, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear). But it does draw the interest of embattled CIA veteran Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson). Brown knows the intelligence is faulty, and that it came from a Poundstone source dubbed “Magellan.” He pushes Miller to conduct a secret search for Magellan. This puts Miller in direct conflict with Poundstone, and on the wrong side of a nasty Special Forces team led by Major Briggs (Jason Isaacs). Meanwhile, Miller is approached by a local citizen who calls himself “Freddy” (Khalid Abdalla). Freddy claims to have seen Iraqi General Al Rawi (Yigal Naor)—the Jack of Clubs from the infamous most-wanted deck of cards. Miller and Freddie form a wary alliance that will lead to much deeper secrets—secrets you’ll probably see coming.

The problem with this story is that we already know too much of the ending. Brian Helgeland’s script, inspired by a nonfiction book, is nonetheless too fictional to make an impact. We want to hiss at Kinnear’s villain, but Poundstone is little more than a loose take on Paul Brenner. He’s a movie fall guy for the real-life villains. There are general declamations about this “going to the top levels of Washington,” but without specific indictments or new information it all plays like a 7-year-old newspaper article. The one element that is somewhat daring is that the CIA comes off better than the military. Maybe that’s why parent studio Universal tried to paint Green Zone as a spiritual sequel to the Bourne movies. Beyond the signature Greengrass jumpy, photojournalist-style camera work, they really aren’t all that similar.

Damon tends to pick his projects carefully and commit to them fully. You can sense his urgency here as a man who prefers things black and white, but can’t deny what he’s seeing. You can also tell when the story fails Damon; he starts running faster and yelling louder in hopes it will still mean something. He’s good, as always, but this won’t go down as being among his best work. Abdalla, who was also in Greengrass’ United 93, is good as Freddy, and I suspect he could have been better. Helgeland keeps a level of cruel realism by making sure no one treats Freddy as an equal—not even Miller. The problem is that Abdalla gets scants moments to shade his character, and must carry the burden of representing all decent Iraqi citizens. Kinnear plays the oily Poundstone expertly, and Amy Ryan (Gone Baby, Gone) does her best with an underwritten role as a Wall Street Journal reporter. Isaacs (Brotherhood) proves his chameleon skills again as Briggs. Only the reliable Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) seems miscast as Brown. He struggles mightily with the American accent, and doesn’t seem to know exactly where his character fits in.

From a technical standpoint, Green Zone is top-notch. It moves at lightning speed, and the effort to blend a thriller with a grimly natural setting evokes The Constant Gardener. It really is engaging all the way through. But Green Zone needed either a new take on well-known history, or to have reached screens some time before 2006. Seven years into this conflict, it all adds up to a big “huh?”

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard readers for many years.