In “Green Zone,” Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass team up again following their pairing in “The Bourne Ultimatum.” A war thriller set in conquered Iraq, “Green Zone” is chiefly centered on a soldier’s search for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), their possession and possible use by Saddam Hussein being the Bush’s Administration’s rationale for going to war. Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) is perplexed because each possible weapon site is turning up empty. Is he being led on a wild goose chase in search of phantom WMDs, or is he a victim in an internal sabotage by an Iraqi agent feeding the U.S. government faulty intelligence? Greengrass uses the fall of Baghdad to indulge in intellectual fantasies about America’s rush to war. Greengrass revels in his patented orgasmic camera technique, exploited to useful effect in the “Bourne” films. For once though, his jerky aesthetic falls short, diminishing the power of the images and vitiating the political impact of the film. One of the ironies of filmmaking is that images in a composition must be clear and fluid even if what is composed embodies chaos. Hence, films are expected to have lucid battle scenes that distinguish between ally and foe, when in reality, the fog of war makes such allowances to visual acuity an afterthought. By realistically photographing these scenes in his pseudo-documentary style, Greengrass loses his audience in the blur and dust.”Green Zone” is political commentary posing as action thriller. Like his two Bourne films, Greengrass plumbs the relationship between memory and good action. Jason Bourne is an amnesiac killer who assumes he’s the good guy. It takes Bourne confronting his past to atone for his evil deeds. In “Green Zone,” America wants to flee from its previous failures, content in the knowledge it’s an exceptional and good country. But there’s no escape from our Middle Eastern mistake; we’ll have to confront it now or remain tortured by a guilt complex. “Green Zone” has been summarily dismissed by critics as fact pregnant with fiction (read: “Iraq war thriller ‘Green Zone’ strays outside lines of history” – USA Today) as if Greengrass’ role is to act as court or counter-historian. What he actually does is sketch a tiny portrait, so audiences will use their imagination and their memories to create their own masterpieces of governmental cynicism. It is true that no WMDs were found in Iraq, and it is true that faulty intelligence served as the lynchpin for the escapade in the Middle East (‘Blair’s blind faith in intelligence’ – Guardian UK, Jan. 28). No American needs a film to tell him these obvious facts.The film falters in its treatment of the possible solutions to the initial Iraqi conflict. Once the government collapsed, the U.S. was left with several unpalatable choices: Either install an unpopular expatriate who lackslegitimacy (as done in Afghanistan), stifle any nascent insurrection by co-opting the feared Iraqi military and Ba’ath party establishment or disband the Ba’ath party with the hope the seeds of democracy would flourish and overcome insurgent violence. We picked the wrong option in hindsight, though there is no guarantee any of the others would have turned out any differently. Greengrass’s myopia is due to the triumphant confidence of having been proved right; this is what fuels his inability to conceive the complexities of the military and political situation on the ground. Besides, the film only engages in the political justification for the Iraq War, oblivious to possible moral groundings for such an exercise. For instance, would the war have been justified if WMDs were found? Wasn’t Saddam’s bogus relationship with Al-Qaeda also an important reason for the war?Nevertheless, even if Greengrass’s camera work is finally yielding diminishing returns, even if he is uncomprehending of the power struggle between American intelligence agencies or convolutions of warfare, these are disposable blemishes when a historical immoral dump like “Inglourious Basterds” receives critical acclaim. “Green Zone” is worth watching simply because it makes us remember our supine complicity during the Iraqi invasion — and hopefully we will never forget.Freke Ette is a political theory graduate student from Uyo, Nigeria. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_fette. – – – -Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]