Green Zone

One day a filmmaker will finally crack that most tricky of cinematic problems: how to get an audience for an Iraq-themed movie. It doesn't matter how many Oscars were won by The Hurt Locker, or how good the film is, it wasn't seen by many people at the cinema and judging by Green Zone's opening weekend even the Damon-Greengrass combination can't entice a large audience. Clearly the attempt to portray Iraq via the mechanism of an action thriller didn't fool people. It's a shame as it works perfectly well on its own terms. It's a more political film than The Hurt Locker (which was very much about the psychology of the men on the ground) but then again any film centred around those pesky WMDs will inevitably be political. At least the issue is crucial to the plot rather than just shoehorned in to score points.
The Iraqis might be split into factions but so are the Americans, to equally deadly effect (bizarrely, a CIA officer becomes the voice of reason) but that's as far as the similarities go. While the locals desperately search for water and loot whatever they can find, the American authorities and their allies lounge by the pool in the Green Zone. It's a world away from the situation on the ground and the position of the soldiers doing the actual fighting. No wonder such catastrophic decisions were made. Just as bad is the servile complicity of the press, serving up unsubstantiated "exclusives" at the behest of the government. By far the most sympathetic character is Freddy, whose attempt to do the right thing (let the Americans know that high-ranking wanted Iraqis are meeting close by) illustrates the maxim that no good deed goes unpunished. His final exasperated outburst to Miller expresses the anger and frustration of a population whose ability to make decisions about their own destiny has been removed.