Green Zone (film)

Green Zone is a 2010 action thriller film directed by Paul Greengrass and written by Brian Helgeland, based on the 2006 non-fiction book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran. The book documented life within the Green Zone in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The key players in the film are General Mohammed Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor), who is hiding in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq, and US Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon), a Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) leader who is searching for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Miller finds that the majority of the intel given to him is inaccurate. His efforts to find the true story about the weapons are blocked by US Department of Defense official Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear). The cast also features Brendan Gleeson, Amy Ryan, Khalid Abdalla, and Jason Isaacs. Principal photography began in January 2008 in Spain, later moving to Morocco and the United Kingdom.

Green Zone premiered at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in Japan on 26 February 2010, and was released on 12 March in the United Kingdom, by Universal Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics and was a box-office failure, grossing $95 million against a budget of $100 million (excluding marketing costs).