THRILLER; 1hr 55min
STARRING: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson
Mass deception: Damon
Baghdad in 2003 is chaos with heatstroke — a seething hell for the American soldiers searching fruitlessly for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The anarchic mix of clashing cultures and official misinformation is an impossible equation and as far as Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Damon) is concerned, the strategists are in denial. Stymied at every so-called weapons site, Miller is burning to know why he and his men keep coming up empty-handed. And being the type of guy who burns by nature, he is fed up with playing by the rules — which leads to tough-nut interchanges with Defense Intelligence agent Clark Poundstone (Kinnear; Gleeson is a simpatico CIA station chief). Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the tactical scrambling intensifies, as the WMDs remain conspicuous by their absence.
Director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) works fast and hand-held. The non-existent WMDs are old news now. But the secret motives that inform a war are still headline material and with all guns blazing from stem to stern, the hectic, airless quality of Miller’s quest for facts unspools like hyper nightly news footage.
