Damn it all to hell. For most of 2007 I was able to ignore the glut of Iraq themed movies because, frankly, most of them looked downright awful. Lions for Lambs, Rendition, and Redacted were fairly universally acknowledged to be bad movies regardless of the subject matter. Others, like In the Valley of Elah were presented as the movie equivalent of castor oil; good for you, but no fun going down. The only real interesting terrorism movie was Peter Berg’s The Kingdom, which primarily was just a cop procedural dressed up with terrorism trappings.

Now I’m finding that an Iraq-themed movie is coming down the pike that will probably be good, damn it. As we noted back in June, Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon are joining up to adapt "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone." If that teaming wasn’t already appealing, Variety says that top-notch actors Amy Ryan and Greg Kinnear have joined the cast. There is no way I can ignore this movie now, as much as I’d like to.

Greengrass has made the hands-down best movie in each of the last two years (The Bourne Ultimatum and United 93.) Damon is obviously the top action star working right now. Adding Ryan and Kinnear to that duo makes lining up to buy tickets a no-brainer. Ryan is killing in Gone, Baby Gone and previously killed in The Wire. Kinnear showed in Little Miss Sunshine that he is the real deal. I don’t care if they are going to talk about the failed hunt for WMDs or give Al Gore 20 minutes to blather on about whatever, I’m gonna be in the theater. No matter how much it pisses me off to say so.