Green Zone is set in Iraq in 2003. A Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) led by chief warrant officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is scouring Baghdad looking for those weapons of mass destruction they have heard so much about. Acting on information contained in a military intelligence package, Miller and his men brave heavy fire from an enemy sniper to break into an abandoned building, only to find nothing but rusty toilet parts. Who is responsible for the faulty intel reports? That is what Miller wants to know and the conscientious officer will stop at nothing to find out even if it takes the rest of the movie to do it.
Damon Gets into Character By Going the Full Monty
Although Roy Miller is the fictional creation of screenwriter Brian Helgeland the character is based on US Army Chief Warrant Officer Richard "Monty" Gonzales. With twenty years of military experience including a stint heading up his own Mobile Exploitation Team in Iraq US Army Chief Warrant Officer Gonzales proved to be a valuable resource on the set. Damon worked closely with the officer to insure that his portrayal was as close to the reality of the situation as possible.
Art Imitates Life in Action Scenes
To add extra authenticity to the film members of Damon's unit are played by actual soldiers, many of whom had recently returned from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, according to a behind-the-scenes DVD featurette, director Paul Greengrass' flair for staging kinetic action scenes proved to be so realistic that even some of the soldiers got caught up in the manufactured drama.
"All of us are going on instinct of what we are trained to do," MET member Adam Wendling tells the camera. "You know the rounds in your gun aren't real and you know people aren't really trying to hurt you but in the heat of the moment your adrenaline is going. It feels real."
Filmmaker Specializes in Documentary Like Realism
Anyone who seen his docudramas like Sunday Bloody Sunday and United 93 knows British born director Greengrass has a singular ability to take a factual event and recreate it with gripping "you are there" immediacy and he is in fine form here.
Green Zone is pumped full of the kind of running and gunning action and up close and personal fight scenes that energized The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum.
Damon and Greengrass worked well together on both those films and seem to share an intuitive understanding of how to shoot these kinds of scenes and what makes them work.
There are no marks on the ground, according to the director. "The reality of the scenes take over and the cameras adjust. As a result you get some really great impulsive stuff."
Of course, we know now that they never did find any WMDs in Iraq and so it is to the immense credit of the cast and crew that the film manages to whip up some potent suspense anyway and does so with an authenticity that makes us feel the desert heat and sense the adrenalized anxiety and frustration of Miller and his men.
Richard Goertz - Richard Goertz has a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in English and History acquired light years ago (when his hair was longer) and have ...
