Green Zone (Cert 15, 114 mins, Universal Pictures (UK. Starring: Matt Damon, Khalid Abdalla, Greg Kinnear, Jason Isaacs. ****
Four weeks after a 1993 blitzkrieg on Baghdad, US soldier Roy Miller (Damon) and his team careen through the war-torn capital on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. Yet again, they draw a blank and Miller voices his frustrations, suspecting bogus intelligence. A tip-off from a disgruntled local, Freddy (Abdalla), leads Miller to a meeting of Saddam’s high-ranking advisers. Trusted general Al Rawi (Naor) escapes, but Miller acquires a notebook containing the locations of enemy safe houses. A breathless two hours of adrenaline-pumping action and political manoeuvring that places as much emphasis on emotionally-charged dialogue as the set-pieces.

Valentine’s Day (Cert 12, 119 mins, Warner Home Video). Starring Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, George Lopez, Jennifer Garner, Bryce Robinson, Shirley MacLaine, Hector Elizondo, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Jessica Biel, Eric Dane. ***
Valentine’s Day is a morass of cloying fairytale romances across the generations that predominantly end with a happy-ever-after or, at the very least, a comeuppance and emotional closure. The scriptwriter has evidently overdosed on Richard Curtis’s comedy Love Actually, penning a version on the sun-baked streets of Los Angeles. Some of the plot strands are hopelessly contrived and certain characters, such as Biel’s lonely workaholic, could have been cut entirely. However, there are some charming distractions such as Julia’s revenge for a betrayal, and the interplay between MacLaine and Elizondo, which comes to a head at an open-air film screening of the 1958 film Hot Spell, starring a young, fresh-faced... MacLaine. Two hours isn’t long enough to fully develop more than 20 major protagonists and their storylines, and this tale of romance and heartbreak is little more than cinematic candy floss.