The American media has seen a surfeit of books and movies that seek to put an exclamation point on the palm-to-forehead bungle that was – er, is — the American invasion of Iraq. The themes of hubris, avarice and U.S. imperialism got the lion’s share of the spotlight in the year 2000 to the point of absurdity. It is still hard not to groan at the sight of any new Iraq-related movie trailer or some pundit jackass’ pithily titled new book on display at Barnes & Noble. Too often these works are loosely founded on some nebulous “yeah man, screw Bush” premise that relies on sensationalist tactics, rarely advancing debate and failing to elucidate the causes of Uncle Sam’s field trip to Baghdad.

Which is why “Green Zone,” the latest from the “Bourne” series actor-director duo of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass, was a refreshing take even seven years after the invasion began. It’s adapted from Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s mostly apolitical “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” written in 2006, which focuses on the fruitless search for WMDs and the communication breakdowns that caused it. Its lessons can be characterized as left-leaning, but they’re made with a type of realism and pragmatism that make them worth listening to.

“Green Zone” refers to the administrative sector of Baghdad that houses American intelligence command centers, and Greengrass makes it pretty clear that this is where the stakes of war are set. After an enterprising commando (Matt Damon, “Invictus”) from the Army’s WMD unit finds no such weapons in the intelligence-backed locations in the weeks following the shock and awe bombardments, he begins to sniff around and do some recon of his own.

Through the personalities Damon encounters, Greengrass constructs a microcosm of the larger forces at play in the Iraq War: An embattled Iraqi citizen who supplies information but offers no warm welcome to the Americans, the gritty journalist who is fed up with government question-dodging, a shanghaied general from the Republican guard and two intelligence officials whose conflict represents the institutional disunion of the invasion overall.

The film’s strongest asset is therefore the depth of its characters and the top-down view they provide of the early stages of deployment, giving opinions from all areas of the political spectrum something to work with. “Green Zone” is neither a bleeding heart treatise against American occupation and nor a salvo against all those who supported the war in the first place; it’s a dramatic view of how sub rosa meetings and internal conflict can influence military operations and the perception of truth.

But “Green Zone” also brings the plight of the soldier to the fore by revolving all the drama around Damon, wisely foregoing the hackneyed treatment of soldiers as thickheaded cogs in a system far beyond their control or understanding. Damon serves as an everyman (granted, an everyman with special weapons training) whose commitment to service ideals drives him to pursue whatever means necessary to defraud Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear, “Flash of Genius”), a Pentagon official who fed Washington self-serving lies about WMD locations.

All the action (with the same sleekness and rapidity of the “Bourne” series) comes to a head when Damon and Poundstone’s toadie in Special Forces square off to get to the Iraqi general first, as he is the key to falsifying the WMD intelligence. Not to give too much away, but a creative twist at the end of the chase shifts the thematic locus of the war from America’s chance of victory to Iraq’s chance of survival. It’s a surprising question for an action thriller to make and it shows Greengrass’ ability to make movies that leave us less guilty about getting excited over gunfire and explosions.

So even in the wake of Oscar darling “The Hurt Locker,” “Green Zone” can stand on its own merits as a staid look at a highly sensationalized and at this point dead-horse subject, proving Greengrass’ adaptive powers can be manifest in new and relevant ways. Don’t be fooled by the trailers that make it out to be the next installment of the “Bourne” series. “Green Zone” does hold on to their best elements, but Greengrass is really tackling a much more delicate subject this time around. So even if you have strong opinions on the Iraq war one way or another, you’ll still get the badass cunning of Jason Bourne if you want it.

3.5 stars out of 5.