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Green Zone
Metascore
63 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 38 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 25 out of 38
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 38
  3. Negative: 0 out of 38
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  1. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    Dec 14, 2010
    100
    An expensive flop and the latest Iraq movie to be shunned by the mass audience, Green Zone was still the year's most visceral, thrilling entertainment.
  2. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    It is a thriller, not a documentary. It's my belief that the nature of the neocon evildoing has by now become pretty clear. Others will disagree. The bottom line is: This is one hell of a thriller.
  3. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    88
    Damon's prior appearances as Jason Bourne make him credible in this role.
  4. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    80
    Christopher Rouse's rapid-fire editing nervously stitches the stunts, chases, fights and confrontations together. It's a remarkable film.
  5. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Joe Neumaier
    80
    The cast is strong, and Damon is a dependable center for all this, a classic American good guy wanting to know what's rotten and why.
  6. Empire
    Reviewed by: Mark Dinning
    80
    Bourne goes epic. A wham-bam actioner, but its pointed political subtext ensures Damon and Greengrass deliver their most provocative mission yet.
  7. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: J. Hoberman
    80
    A master of smash-mash montage and choreographed chaos, Greengrass is the best action director working today, adroit at producing the sense of everyone converging and everything happening simultaneously.
  8. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    80
    Made with daring and passion, it attempts the impossible and comes remarkably close to pulling it off. So close, in fact, that the skill and audacity used, the shock and awe of this highly entertaining attempt, are more significant than the imperfect results.
  9. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: A.O. Scott
    80
    When Mr. Greengrass made "United 93," his 2006 reconstruction of one of the Sept. 11 hijackings, some people fretted that it was too soon. My own response to Green Zone is almost exactly the opposite: it's about time.
  10. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    78
    No matter where your political gullibilities lie, Green Zone is a riveting piece of actioneering.
  11. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    75
    Mixes fact and speculation in a way that's already raised the ire of some on the right as well as on the left.
  12. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Mick LaSalle
    75
    Watchable in spite of Greengrass as much as because of him. The story is good enough to make viewers want to ignore the photography.
  13. Premiere
    Reviewed by: Jordan Burchette
    75
    It's at times implausible and heavy-handed, but thrillers need villains and it's not like the Ba'ath Party had an exclusive license on 'em.
  14. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    Reviewed by: Calvin Wilson
    75
    Green Zone can't make up its mind whether it's "The Bourne Insurrection" or "Hurt Locker: The Prequel."
  15. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Bill Goodykoontz
    70
    To pretend that the film doesn't make a political statement is silly. Of course it does. It wouldn't be effective at all if it didn't.
  16. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Stephanie Zacharek
    70
    This is a movie that recognizes there's no straight line to the truth, which is part of what makes it vaguely unsatisfying -- though it's also what keeps it honest.
  17. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Shawn Levy
    67
    Indeed, Green Zone plays a little bit like a video game version of the Oscar-winning film (The Hurt Locker)-- which should tell you right off whether it's for you or not.
  18. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    67
    For the first time in Greengrass' career, the politics too often get ahead of the action, so points that might have been subtly embedded in the story are instead laid out like a left-wing editorial.
  19. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    63
    Miller's wake-up call is meant to be ours. Too little and too late? Maybe. But even in this Bourne Zone, Damon and Greengrass haven't shirked their duty to enlighten and entertain.
  20. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    63
    Partly real and partly, increasingly, fantastic and outlandish in its wishful thinking.
  21. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    63
    Green Zone is just an excuse for director Paul Greengrass to haul out his jittery hand-held camera as Miller and Co. sprint through the streets and buildings of Baghdad in pursuit of one villain or another.
  22. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Steven Rea
    63
    In the wake of the Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker" - a far better film, and one with a less strident, less obvious agenda - Green Zone arrives looking strangely anachronistic.
  23. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    63
    Zone feels anticlimactic now. It also pales in comparison to Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker," the most powerful film yet made about the Iraq war.
  24. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    63
    The jittery, scattershot camerawork of Greengrass's longtime cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, was used far more coherently in Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar-winning "The Hurt Locker," and the constant blurry close-ups of computer screens and street-level scrums lose their power with each successive cut.
  25. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Wesley Morris
    63
    Green Zone is somewhere between a blockbuster and a tract -- a traction movie. It whizzes and bangs and sizzles as it chases the truth like a dog off its leash.
  26. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    58
    With Green Zone, though, the malaise has finally hit me. So while Damon's Miller uncovers the (inconvenient) truth of why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, all I want to know is: How does he suggest we get out?
  27. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    58
    Green Zone wraps up with a wish-fulfillment fantasy that is about as believable as watching reinforcements riding in to save Custer.
  28. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    50
    Screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River) is the real culprit here, creating a crude paint-by-numbers fiction that keeps yelling about the importance of the truth while hurtling in the opposite direction.
  29. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    50
    Green Zone isn't so much a bad movie as a misguided one.
  30. New York Observer
    Reviewed by: Rex Reed
    50
    Shot by Barry Ackroyd, the same cinematographer who filmed "The Hurt Locker," and using the same camera techniques, this movie looks like outtakes from a much better film.
  31. Slate
    Reviewed by: Dana Stevens
    50
    To suggest that a lone, brave soldier could have set things right with a little amateur sleuthing seems like cinematic wish-fulfillment, an insult both to the intelligence of viewers and to the troops.
  32. Variety
    Reviewed by: Todd McCarthy
    50
    Once Damon's one-man truth squad goes off the reservation and starts behaving too much like Jason Bourne for comfort, the film begins not only spilling more blood but also leaking crucial credibility.
  33. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: J.R. Jones
    50
    Director Paul Greengrass has applied his jumpy, tumbling visual style to action blockbusters with Matt Damon and serious dramatizations of political events. This Iraq war drama makes a game attempt to meld the two, though manufacturing thrills takes precedence over any kind of journalistic insight.
  34. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Joshua Rothkopf
    40
    Not since a Nam-scarred Sly Stallone asked, "Do we get to win this time?" in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" has an American action star been deployed to rewrite history so thoroughly.
  35. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Ray Greene
    40
    Green Zone is an exercise in commercial cowardice masquerading as a thriller about political bravery.
  36. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    40
    It's also rather tawdry. The climax is as ludicrous as any Jack Bauer adventure, and Greengrass is always on shaky ground. Literally.
  37. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    40
    For a while Green Zone generates genuine excitement, as well as plenty of provocation--a fatuous surrogate for Ahmed Chalabi, a pervasive scorn for American planning--but then goes off its own reservation into a won't-fly zone of awkward preachments and hapless absurdities.
  38. The New Yorker
    Reviewed by: Anthony Lane
    40
    What lends the film its grip and its haste is also what makes it unsatisfactory.
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User Reviews

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User Score
6.6 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 167 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 54 out of 80
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 80
  3. Negative: 17 out of 80
  1. grandpajoe6191
    6
    The movie is realistically constructed compared to those war movies that spent millions of dollars with famed stars labeled in it. But problem with "Green Zone" is, they take things too seriously.… Full Review »
  2. Lopez17
    10
    Paul Greengrass up until around 2001 no one knew whom this Irish up and coming director was that is until he directed the second of the three Bourne films "The Bourne Supremacy"(2004) that became the highest grossing film for the series at that point. one of Greengrass' most critically acclaimed films following on the heels of his universally acclaimed "Bloody Sunday"(2002). Three years later Greengrass directed one of the last decades most acclaimed and most controversial films "United 93"(2006) based on the true story of the heroism of the passengers and there tragic death when they forced the plane into a nose dive causing it to crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The film was a massive critical success but meet with extreme criticism form audiences alike over its touchy source material. The year after Greengrass and actor Matt Damon re-teamed to star and direct the third(and possibly final installment) of the hugely successful Bourne series with the "Bourne Ultimatum"(2007) which proved to be the highest grossing and biggest critically acclaimed hit of the series bringing a crashing final close to the saga of Jason Bourne. For nearly three years Greengrass was working on a new project that while may lack the enthusiasm of his early works is no less thought provoking or thrilling as his earlier works. This film is one of his best and a film that not only gives you the views of why we go to war but if the reasons we do go to war are really for the right reasons. When I first heard of Paul Greengrass' "Green Zone" back in late 2009 I can say that I was extremely excited to see Greengrass and Damon back together again making a big action picture again I could almost picture how this film would have played out in my head(no thanks to my limitless imagination). I saw Damon playing a solider fighting against another Government conspiracy involving some sort of political assassination or cover up that he exposed. I was eager with anticipation however, when I found out the release date of this film my anticipation dwindled. It dwindled not because I found out the film might not be as good as it appears but it dwindled because I would have to wait three months into 2010 to see one of my most anticipated films of 2010. After nearly two months of waiting I finally was able to see Paul Greengrass' "Green Zoneâ and let me tell you there is more to this film than meets the eye. "Green Zone" is a political war thriller set during the early days of the Iraq War where a lone solider named Roy Miller (Matt Damon) slowly pieces together that the reasons he and his fellow soldiers were sent to Iraq may actually be false. Miller sets off on a mission to exposes the lies behind the real reasons he was sent to war. "Green Zoneâ is as intelligent as it is thought provoking it is the kind of film that classics are made from and this film is sure to become a classic in time. What makes "Green Zone" so effective is not who directed it or who wrote it, or who starred in it but how it plays out and how it imparts its message to the moviegoers if you do not feel like there is something else there besides action you leave the movie feeling unfulfilled and disheartened. Wishing you had spent your money on something else except this movie is not that kind of movie. It is the kind of movie that when you walk out your saying "Wow!" instead of "That could of been better.â "Paul Greengrass' intense, bold, and gutsy political action thriller doesnât pull any punches or any stops in one of the years most under appreciated films. What I think is most impressive about this film is not its energy but its story the story in a film is one of the many ingredients to a great film and this one has one hell of a story. While some may find the story a little, to familiar and others may just flat out hate it, there may be a few that may find this film fresh, thought provoking and original, which is how I stand when it comes to this film. "Green Zone" is an engrossing experience from the flashy opening scene to the politically infused climax Paul Greengrass' tense war drama does not disappoint for a minute and it you never know this film may change how you view the reasons we do go to war.… Full Review »
  3. IsaacV.
    3
    Just didn't really enjoy it. not deep enough and the action is pretty sensless. Very little good things to say about this film.
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