Movie Review: Green Zone (2010)

*Ron Perlman voice activated* War… War never changes. *Ron Perlman voice deactivated*.

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to enter the… “Green Zone”.

Baghdad, 2003. Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is a US soldier that has been sent to find weapons of mass destruction within the unstable and war-torn city. However, the information he’s been given seems to lead him to jack shit every time. And soon Miller finds himself more or less uncovering a bit of a conspiracy regarding why they are actually in Iraq. Sounds like a really cool plot, kind of “Bourne” meets “Black Hawk Down”. And how is the plot here? Eh. I wouldn’t call it bad, I never sat there going “This is shit”. But it’s easy to see that they are trying to be really deep and have this be an incredibly engaging plot, but I honestly think they missed a bit. Like I said, it’s not bad, but I think that it isn’t as great as it tries to be.

The characters in this movie are bland and not too interesting. Sure, they try to give a few of them some backstory, but I never thought “Wow, this is a great character!”. Matt Damon is great as Miller. He is a somewhat likable badass. And by likable I mean that he’s not a total asshole. And Matt Damon clearly gives it his all. Greg Kinnear plays intelligence agent Clark Poundstone (actual name) and he was really good in the role. Brendan Gleeson plays CIA agent Martin Brown and he’s great in the role. Amy Ryan plays a Wall Street Journal reporter in the movie and she was really good. We also get Jason Isaacs (sporting a bitchin’ mustache) as a soldier and he’s really good. The entire cast is really good even though their characters aren’t the most interesting.

The score for the movie was composed by John Powell and it was really good. It’s very tense and exciting and helps elevate a lot of the scenes in the movie. It’s basically styled in a similar way to Powell’s “Bourne” scores, minus some of the more spy-ish elements. And it’s really good.

This movie was directed by Paul Greengrass and he did a pretty solid job. His signature intense handheld style is alive and well in this movie and it really brings something to certain scenes in the movie… mainly the action scenes. Because even though some of the moer talk-y scenes in the movie ar emore on the meh side of thigns, the action scenes are badass. When the bullets start flying, this movie is really exciting. The action is really intense and badass.

This movie has gotten some mixed reception. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 53% positive rating. On Metacritic it has a score of 63/100. Roger Ebert gave it 4/4 stars. And on imdb.com it has a score of 6,8/10.

“Green Zone” is a pretty good action-thriller. It has an okay story, meh characters, really good performances, really good music, and really good directing. But since it’s story isn’t the most engaging and the characters not the most interesting, it is brought down a bit. Time for my final score. *Bang*. My final score for “Green Zone” is a 7,89/10. So even though it’s flawed, I’d still say that it’s worth renting.

My review of “Green Zone” is now completed.

*Insert clever outro here.*.