Green Zone (2010)

Director: Paul Greengrass

Writer: Rajiv Chandrasekaran (book); Brian Helgeland (screenplay)

Cast: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Jason Isaacs, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, Yigal Naor, Said Faraj, Nicoye Banks

Synopsis: Matt Damon reteams with Paul Greengrass to create a thriller grounded in contemporary politics: the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) travels across war-torn Iraq, pursuing the intelligence he's been given, but every site indicated comes up empty of WMDs.

Investigating the source of the intelligence, he finds himself caught between CIA agent Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) and politician Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) over the identity of "Magellan," the supposed source. As Miller tracks down an Iraqi general, he ends up further and further afield, facing danger from all sides. It's hard to say which is the greater accomplishment--that Green Zone manages to turn a still-volatile political issue into a propulsive action movie, or that it manages to depict Iraqi people as individuals with a wide range of responses to what's happened to their country.

Damon's performance is low-key but effective as Miller tries to maintain some semblance of moral clarity in a circumstance that muddies everything. Also featuring Amy Ryan as a compromised journalist and Khalid Abdalla as an Iraqi civilian who gets dragged into far more than he expected. --Bret Fetzer