Simon Dillon reviews the film

Director Paul Greengrass has been often credited with singlehandedly reinvigorating action movies in the last decade. That's overstating the case slightly, as it ignores the influence of TV's thriller par excellence series 24, not to mention the fact that the first (and as far as I'm concerned best) Bourne film was directed by Doug Liman. Then there was the little matter of Casino Royale.

One thing is undeniable however; Greengrass' "action-movie-as-cinema-verite" style has been massively successful in breathing life into what had become a stale, moribund genre. No longer does the bomb automatically get stopped seconds before detonation. No longer does the hero always save the hostage and get the girl. At last there is a sense of jeopardy and danger in such films, and Greengrass' latest, Green Zone, is no exception.

Green Zone is no Bourne in Baghdad, though judging by the trailers one could be mistaken for thinking so. Nor is it the first film to use the Iraq war as a background for a thrilling piece of action entertainment. The plot - based on a book by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and adapted by regular Greengrass collaborator Brian Helgeland - is torn from yesterday's headlines. US soldier Roy Miller (Matt Damon) keeps coming up empty when investigating supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction sites and begins asking too many questions. His involvement with reporter Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), slippery CIA agent Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), special forces agent Briggs (Jason Isaacs on fine form), and another CIA agent Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) eventually forces him to go rogue as the truth about WMDs begins to emerge.

Yet the key character in the story is not Miller, nor any of the Americans but Miller's press ganged interpreter Freddy (Khalid Abdalla), a man whose conscience causes him to feed intelligence to the Americans, but whose hopes for a better future in his country are dashed by dodgy conspiratorial dealings. His character is the only one in which any significant emotional investment is made, though Miller's simmering righteous anger at why they are in Iraq in the first place if there are no WMDs also resonates near the end.

That said, although not entirely bereft of a political stance, Green Zone doesn't really ask "why?" just "where are they?" in between stunning action sequences. Some on the right wing have nonsensically claimed this film is leftist propaganda, but the argument seems ludicrous and foolish given that no weapons of mass destruction were found, and that WMDs were the reason the public were given for going to war in the first place. The film has no idea whether the real reason was oil or something more sinister, nor is the subject even raised. Given the recent Oscar worthy performances of Tony Blair and others at the Chilcot inquiry, we'll probably never know for sure.

In short, this is a fine, occasionally riveting piece of action filmmaking (with the usual warnings for violence and swearing, in my opinion justified by context). It's not as tense, profound or resolutely apolitical as The Hurt Locker, but it is well worth a watch.