Does Matt Damon Hate America?

What’s the deal with Matt Damon? Such is his popularity that it would seem he could pick just about any role but he seems to pick an awful lot of movies where the America or at least the American government seems to be the villain.

Now I’ll give some mad cred to Damon because he was in Saving Private Ryan but let’s go over some of his most recent movies:

Bourne Identity: Bad Guy? American Government.
Bourne Supremacy: Bad Guy? American Government.
Bourne Ultimatum: Bad Guy? American Government.

Wouldn’t you think that with all of Jason Bourne’s super assault skills we could actually point him in the direction of someone who actually wants to harm America? I don’t know? Maybe an Islamic terrorist or something. I’d even take the obligatory former Soviet Spy who’s gotten his hands on some nukes storyline.

But now Damon changes things up with…

The Green Zone: Bad Guy? American Government. Seriously, New York Post columnist Kyle Smith writes:

I can’t believe what I just saw, so I’ll think about it some more before I go into detail. But if I were the kind of excitable guy who believes in boycotts, I’d say “Boycott NBC-Universal” for its appalling new anti-American flick “Green Zone,” an absurdly awful would-be actioner that stars Matt Damon as a US warrant officer in 2003 Baghdad who, during ongoing combat operations, security scares, political problems and the search for weapons of mass destruction, takes a break on his own initiative and decides to launch a one-man crusade to investigate….the United States and its intelligence-gathering operations.

I would never have accused director Paul Greengrass, who made the astonishingly powerful “United 93,” of being simplistic. But he has made a $100 million war film in which American troops are the bad guys.

You sensing a pattern?

The Original Script for Goodwill Hunting by Damon and Ben Affleck has Will being hunted down by the American government.

Damon had a cameo in a movie glorifying Che Guevara. Even the cartoon Spirit which Matt Damon voiced had the American military as the bad guys.

He starred in Syriana which Charles Krauthammer said “burns with the certainty of its malign anti-Americanism. Osama bin Laden could not have scripted this film with more conviction.”

I think one of the reasons is likely that anti-Americanism passes as depth for the cultural elite. And now I hear some very ironic rumors in the blogosphere that Damon may star in the “Captain America.” I really hope not because I, for one, am taking a Damon break.