It’s hard to mark down a film like Paul Greengrass’ latest, Green Zone, for being well-executed but poorly timed. But honestly, what other choice is there? Coming off the heels of The Hurt Locker‘s success at the Academy Awards, any attempt to validate Greengrass’ work as more than a perfunctory war film would be disingenuous. The Hurt Locker, for its limitation in budget and small scale settings proved to be a riveting, emotional and intimate journey into the core of what scars our modern day soldiers. With almost ten times the amount of money, Greengrass and company haven’t delivered on any of those fronts.

Part of Green Zone‘s problem is that it tries to be one too many things. One one hand, it’s a rather scathing exploration of the closeted political conversations fabricating the existence of weapons of mass destruction for the sake of justifying war in Iraq. On another hand, it is an intimate look at the lives of Ba’athist leaders after the 2003 disappearance of Saddam Hussein following United States insurgence into Iraq.

Finally, on its last hand, Greengrass reverts to his Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum framework in the last third of the film, in which our hero Matt Damon is on foot in an Iraqi warzone tracking down one of Hussein’s top generals. While this is the only portion of the film in which Greengrass seems to be firing on all cylinders, in the midst of an otherwise restrained political piece it seems rather out of place.

But there’s more: a female Wall Street Journal correspondant (Amy Ryan) and her attempt to unveil the truth about WMDs and Damon’s attempt to blow the lid off the situation from within the field. There’s so many diverging paths in Green Zone that it bursts at the seams and never congeals back together.

The largest story element — the attempt to find the truth about WMDs — is also its undoing. We spend far too much time performing perfunctory detective work with Damon’s character and higher-ups played by Greg Kinnear and Brendan Gleason. If the payoff is simply a 45-minute action sequence, this mystery element feels unnecessary and the combat feels asymmetrical with the piece. And with an audience that will undoubtedly be at least somewhat aware of the concept of the fabrication or absence of true weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I’m betting that most will feel two steps ahead of every character on screen.

There are positive aspects of Green Zone — it’s a superbly well-acted movie with a dynamic sense of style from Mr. Greengrass — but they’re overshadowed by the negatives. A 100 million dollar budget has afforded the film a cinematographic style that’s mostly beautiful but often grimy in its nighttime settings, and in comparison to The Hurt Locker, something that feels synthetic and tempered by Hollywood magic.

But with the existence of that film, who can really complain about this one? Its lack of resonance is neither its undoing or its saving grace — Green Zone is a Hollywood war film that will sit and disappear without being provocative or enduring.

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