Green Zone - A Search for That Casualty, Truth

Miller’s words put him at odds with a number of his comrades & with a military culture that discourages service members from questioning whatever mission they are charged with carrying out. But this dutiful, serious officer is also offering a pointed, if implicit, critique of a lot of other recent war movies that have carefully pushed political questions to one side in their intensive focus on the perils & pressures of combat.

“They matter to me,” says Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, played with steely efficiency by Matt Damon. Later, when his search for phantom weapons of mass destruction has led him to uncover a web of lies, spin & ideological wish-fulfillment, Miller expands on the point. “The reasons they go to war always matter,” they says, throwing in an expletive to make sure his meaning is clear. “They always matter.”

But like all of the best action filmmakers — including Kathryn Bigelow, justly rewarded at this week’s Academy Awards for her stringent, soulful work on “The Hurt Locker” — Mr. Greengrass has seldom been interested in method for its own sake. Action under pressure is, for him, a check & a revelation of character. “The Bourne Supremacy” & “The Bourne Ultimatum” refined this axiom to its philosophical essence. Mr. Damon’s character in those movies seldom knew who they was until they saw what they did.

There is lots of fighting in “Green Zone,” most of it executed with the hurtling hand-held camerawork & staccato editing that are hallmarks of Mr. Greengrass’s style. From “Bloody Sunday” through the second & third “Bourne” movies (which turned Mr. Damon in to a minimalist movie star), this director has honed his skill at balancing chaos with clarity. Using locations in Morocco & Germany uncannily doctored to resemble the Baghdad they know from documentaries & contemporary tv news feeds, Mr. Greengrass (decisively aided by the stroboscopic vision of his cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, who also shot “The Hurt Locker”) choreographs foot chases & gun battles that unfold with the velocity, complexity & precision of a Bach fugue played on overdrive.