Greengrass points Matt in the right direction

Matt Damon is cornering the market in cerebral tough guys, thanks to a partnership with director Paul Greengrass. He tells more to Film Critic Tony Earnshaw.

EVERY auteur should have a muse. Martin Scorsese had Robert De Niro before trading him in for a younger, prettier model in the form of Leonardo DiCaprio. Steven Spielberg had Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford and, later, Tom Hanks.

For Surrey-born writer/director Paul Greengrass, that muse comes in the form of boyish 39-year-old Bostonian Matt Damon.

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Actually, Greengrass doesn't really fulfil the criteria of an auteur, though there is a definite style to his work, particularly his partnership with Damon. So far, they've collaborated on two of the hyper-kinetic Bourne adventures, plus Green Zone, a smart take on the early days of the Iraq invasion with Damon as an idealistic US soldier deep in the hot zone.

There is clearly a mutual admiration between Greengrass, 55, and Damon, so much so that the conversation turned to making a picture on the Iraq conflict while both men were labouring on The Bourne Ultimatum four years ago.

With Greengrass's background in documentaries and his realist approach to feature filmmaking – as evidenced by his approach to 9/11 in United 93 and the Ulster Troubles in Bloody Sunday – it was perhaps natural that he would bring that keen eye to the ongoing situation in the Middle East.

"9/11 and the war in Iraq are two huge things that have happened in this last decade. Paul wanted to make films about them but he couldn't quite figure out what it was going to be until he came across Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. I remember we were in Tangiers when he told me: 'You have to read this!'" recalls Damon.

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The actor bought into the real-life story of Monty Gonzalez, who led Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha (MET A) into the first WMD sites that were explored after the 2003 invasion.

Damon says: "He fully expected to find these weapons and told me he wanted to be the first one on CNN holding the evidence."

History shows that no WMDs were found. In Green Zone, the Gonzalez character is renamed Roy Miller and is played by Damon as a patriotic American officer who steadily experiences a blistering epiphany.

Not only does he find himself on a wild goose chase to locate WMDs, he is pitched into a race against time to trace an Iraqi general, Sayyed Hamza (played by Said Faraj), who possesses crucial knowledge that could prevent Iraq tipping into civil war.

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It's as much an attack on the military's gung-ho sense of duty as it is on the lies and obfuscation that surrounded (and continues to surround) the issue of WMDs.

Damon believes Greengrass's approach – he used genuine soldiers and veterans to add authenticity to the backdrop of anarchy and violence – underlines his vision of an administration out of control.

"I hadn't worked on Bloody Sunday and United 93, where Paul used non-actors and 30- to 60-minute improvisations, but I was expecting some of that here because he and I talked in depth about how he had made those films.

"The idea was to blend two types of movie – Bloody Sunday/United 93 and the Bourne films – into one and shoot a big action thriller that took place in the real world."

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Damon admits the Green Zone production – it was shot in Morocco, Spain and London – was unusually gruelling.

It went beyond the boot camp experience of Saving Private Ryan and entered an alternate reality in which Damon realised he was surrounded by scores of fellow performers who, far from being actors, were genuinely the real McCoy.

"It's full of real discussions that real people were having. It completely made my performance different because it felt like I had 30 technical advisers there with me. Everything they do is correct and you don't need to tell them how to stand or where to go.

"I wanted to wear real military gear because all those details help your performance come alive, especially if you are surrounded by soldiers and you want to start feeling like one too.

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"There was a take with Said Faraj in which he just wasn't listening to me and I asked a marine to muzzle him. I'll never forget how real the look on his face was, because he didn't know how far it was

all going.

"Paul takes the screenplay and stretches each scene without worrying about technicalities. Sometimes, actors can overthink things during a shoot, but not with Paul because, when nobody really knows what's going to happen, he just creates this beautiful chaos that when captured the right way, feels so real. I was thrilled to see the film completed. Now I am curious to see how people will react to it."

Green Zone (15) is on nationwide release.

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