Green Zone

Paul Greengrass opens with an American team in Baghdad finding nothing at any address it is given, then turning to ask where the intelligence came from. The line between research and invention is documented. Greengrass optioned Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s 2006 book on how the Green Zone was run, but the film is not an adaptation of it; Tom Stoppard was asked for the script first and Brian Helgeland wrote it. Greengrass had believed Blair and did not oppose the war at first; he later gathered his reading into a footnoted dossier titled How Did We Get It So Wrong? The film’s own military adviser drew that line hardest. Richard Monty Gonzales wrote that he joined only after Greengrass promised the picture would not become a polemic, that Greengrass asked him to mark which elements were factual and which pure fantasy, and that his main job was to push the plot as far away from reality as possible. Not one frame was shot in Iraq. Filming began in January 2008 at the disused Los Alcázares military base in Spain, with most exteriors taken in Morocco and the rest in Britain. A good fit if you want the makers themselves to say which half rests on reporting. Not for anyone troubled by a handheld camera that never settles.