Director/producer Paul Greengrass (United 93) began his career covering global conflict for British television. Green Zone, a look at a
weapons inspector who uncovers a web of deceit while looking for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, offered him a perfect blend of politics, reality and action. Matt Damon stars as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, a career soldier who served in the 1990 Gulf War and has now returned to a very different Iraq to lead a group of WMD hunters known as MET D (Mobile Exploration Team Delta). For realism, Greengrass surrounded Damon (whom he had directed in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum) with a group of veterans to play some of the soldiers on his team.
“Besides working with Paul,” Damon says, “who I admire and whose movies I really like, the big thing for me was the chance to work with a bunch of veterans who had just come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They were the ones who really made our cast. They helped create an environment that felt very authentic. To be around people who are alert and who have been in those situations before is invaluable as an actor. … These guys made it very easy for me because they know exactly what to do and they make it look like I’m delegating responsibility appropriately. In an ideal world you don’t want to have to explain things to people, you want them to be able to do it naturally. The whole point of these guys being here is that they show up and are who they really are. That’s not something that a group of actors, even with a long time to work, could pull off as well as a group of veterans. ”
“Having the real soldiers was fantastic,” Greengrass adds. “It created a bedrock of believability and gave our central actors … the confidence to believe they’re in a very real situation.
Damon passed muster with his troops as well. “Matt’s just like us,” says first-time performer Paul Karsko, who went to Iraq in 2004 with the Air Force Reserves. Stationed in Tikrit, Karsko worked convoy security in Iraq. As Simms in Green Zone, he’s assigned to explosive ordnance disposal (EOD).
Explains fellow soldier Eugene Cherry of this detail: “In a civilian world, EODs would be the equivalent of the bomb squad.” Cherry, who served as an Army medic with an EOD unit in Iraq in 2005, portrays medic Sandales in the film.
As the production recruited its soldiers, co-producer Michael Bronner reached out to American veterans groups to secure the appropriate people for the MET D team and other military roles. Bronner traveled to California, Illinois, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., and interviewed vets about their service in Iraq, as well as their inter-actions with Iraqi civilians.
Marine Michael Dwyer, who fought in Fallujah in 2006 and was redeployed to Iraq in 2008, got into the mix by accident. “I just happened to be in the building when one of the casting sessions was going on in New York, and I thought I was signing up for membership in a veterans organization,” he laughs. “I filled out a form, and the next thing you know, they say, ‘Mr. Bronner will see you now.’ It was a pretty confused conversation.” Nonetheless, Dwyer impressed the co-producer enough to be cast as Potts, the gunner who rides atop Miller’s Humvee.
Fortunately, the vets got on with Greengrass as well as they did their new chief, Damon. “They have no tolerance for BS,” says the director. “They wanted to make a movie that accurately depicted what they went through. A lot of them wouldn’t unpack their bags until they were satisfied that that’s what we were doing.”
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), portrays General Gonzales in scenes at Saddam International Airport. Producer Lloyd Levin concurs with the director that casting men such as Rieckhoff was mandatory to the production’s sense of authenticity. “Green Zone is not a documentary, but we’re trying to get to a sense of what it was like to be there,” Levin says. “Having these guys who know it inside out was incredibly helpful.”
Nathan Lewis makes his acting debut as Henne, MET D’s interpreter. Deployed with the Army a few years ago, he was stationed south of Baghdad as part of a field artillery brigade. “They’ve picked guys you’d find in an Army unit,” Lewis observes. “All the different personalities and characters are here. You work together, slowly get to know everybody … how they operate, what their interests are. You build the unit cohesion and operate as a group.”
Iraq War veterans also portrayed the Special Forces team commanded by Miller’s shadow group leader, Lt. Col. Briggs. “Special Forces have a confidence and a necessary arrogance that is unique. They really are the sharp end of the spear,” says actor Jason Isaacs, who plays Briggs. “I spent all my time on and off screen hanging out with my squad. They clown around and use a lot of gallows humor, but also have the gravity and sense of unity that comes with having seen and done things I don’t even want to imagine. Their honesty has been very bracing.”
To round out the cast, many of the film’s military extras were recruited from the ranks of U.S. service-men and women stationed at Mildenhall and Lakenheath military bases in the U.K.
Of his soldier-turned-performer cast, Greengrass reflects: “I think they all got absolutely swept along with Miller’s story. The fact that Miller turns away from his unit and says, ‘I want to find the truth and I’m going to find it … come what may.’ That’s a great thriller device. It’s a great fictional device because you’ve got your hero active and operating against the odds to uncover the truth.”
“Green Zone” is now showing on Video On Demand. Check your cable system for availability.
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© 2010 Universal Studios. Credit: Jasin Boland
