Question: Can you talk about each of the actors that you cast, what you saw in them that made you want to cast them?
Greengrass: Well, Matt because he's pretty good and the world's greatest movie star.
Greengrass' pyrotechnics aside, Green Zone works mainly because of the hardworking, always-credible Damon. The ultimate good soldier in Saving Private Ryan, the cleverest of con men in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Damon is still a juvenile at 40. He has made a career of alternately projecting and parodying boyish idealism, sometimes in the same movie (e.g., The Informant!). For Green Zone, he's Bourne again with a difference, a gung-ho figure of incredulous righteous indignation.