Clooney and Nora Dunn, who plays a troublesome reporter

The stunt crew in action

Starring alongside Clooney are Mark Wahlberg as Sergeant Troy Barlow, who believes in the job he was sent to do but now wants to get back to his wife and baby daughter; Ice Cube as Staff Sergeant Chief Elgin, a committed Christian who, in ‘real’ life, is a baggage handler at Detroit airport; and Spike Jonze as Private Conrad Vig, a redneck who never finished high school and whose unpredictable personality proves a real threat to the expedition.

“When I started investigating the war,” says Russell, “I only knew the official story: that we went to the Middle East and kicked Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. But when I looked at it more closely, I saw that Hussein was left in power and George Bush encouraged the Iraqi civilians to rise up against Hussein and said ‘We’ll help you do it’. And the people did rise up, and we didn’t support them... and they got massacred by their own army.

Fadil al-Badra, Ice Cube, Clooney and Cliff Curtis.

“I thought this would be an interesting backdrop for a story about a band of soldiers who go into this surreal, corrupted Iraqi atmosphere after the war. They think Iraq is littered with cell phones, luxury cars and booty stolen from rich Kuwait, and they want to steal something for themselves. But they suddenly find a situation that completely confronts their humanity and demands that they re-think what they’re doing and who they are.”