• Friday, June 26, 2009

• Language:

  English

• Runtime:

  130 min

2009

Goofs

• In the final scene where you see James walking wearing his suit in the reflection of the helmet a crew member in a blue or gray shirt can clearly be seen. James is walking down an empty road with no one in front of him (as you can see in the following shot).
• When Sergeant William James enters the "room" where the dead Iraqi boy lies. He walks through the plastic flaps. Using his right hand and then his left hand which holds the gun, to move the flaps. Yet a 3rd hand is seen moving flaps aside in the left bottom corner. But in the next shot it's only Staff Sergeant William James who is in the room. As he yells to his team mates that he has found something. Only then Sergeant JT Sanborn is seen moving the flaps and entering the room after that. Sergeant JT Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge are both wearing gloves. The hand that helped Sergeant William James, doesn't wear any, but does wear a golden bracelet.

Taglines

• You'll know when you're in it.
• Cut the red wire.
• War is a drug.
• You don't have to be a hero to do this job. But it helps.

Trivias

• The production couldn't gain access to a U.S. military base in Kuwait, so the whole production was moved to Amman, Jordan.
• During filming, three, four or more hand-held super 16mm cameras were used to film scenes in documentary style. Nearly two hundred hours of footage was shot at an eye-popping 100:1 shooting ratio (a higher ratio of expended film than the notorious Francis Ford Coppola epic, Apocalypse Now (1979)).
• The production had a hard time booking key crew members and department heads, since the film was shot on location in the Middle East (specifically in Jordan, the country right next door to Iraq).
• The Jordanian military provided security for the film. Military were stationed outside of production sets and outside of hotels where cast and crew were staying.
• The first week of shooting (during the summer in Jordan) there was a heat wave. It was so hot that the cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, took sick with heat stroke.
• Actor Jeremy Renner tripped and fell down some stairs while carrying an Iraqi boy on the film's set. Shooting was stopped for several days while Renner's ankle healed.
• A production bus full of Iraqi refugees (hired as extras) overturned on a road heading to production. Nobody was seriously injured. A few people suffered bruises and one person was reported to have a broken nose.
• Several key American crew members were stopped and questioned and/or had their baggage rummaged through by American airport security prior to go to and/or coming back from Jordan. Even one of the producers was held for questioning upon returning to Los Angeles.
• Part of the shooting took place during the Muslim month of "Ramadan". Non-Muslim crew members hid out and ate in tents and specialty hotels with windows covered by carpets (out of respect, and per the Jordanian law). Smoking, eating or drinking in public during daylight hours of fasting is banned in many Middle Eastern countries, including Jordan, and is punishable with jail time.
• Colin Farrell, Willem Dafoe and Charlize Theron were originally set to star.