Approximately an hour into the film, the team engage in an operation in Yemen. Vera Suarez says, "I've never been to Yemen, sir," and the footage cuts to the drone camera over a traditional Yemeni home with open courtyards. This is actually a movie set, constructed in Ouarzazate, Morocco for the Jerusalem sequence in Ridley Scott 's Kingdom of Heaven (2005). By agreement with the town's government it remained standing after the film wrapped, and is a popular location for productions involving similarly medieval architecture. It was recently featured during Season 4 of the TV show Game of Thrones (2011). Despite being mostly complete, you can identify it as a movie set from the shot in the film, by noting the scaffolding on the bottom of the structure revealing an incomplete wall. A battering ram prop from Kingdom of Heaven (2005) can be seen next to this scaffolding.
This is the third time Ethan Hawke and director Andrew Niccol have worked together, the first time being in Gattaca (1997).
Debuted at the Venice film festival where it received great reception
The patch on the pilots' uniforms are from Air Combat Command (ACC). The ACC is the primary force provider of combat potência Aérea to America's war fighting commands. To support the global implementation of national security strategy, ACC operates fighter, bomber, reconnaissance, battle-management, and electronic-combat aircraft. It also provides command, control, communications and intelligence systems, and conducts global information operations.
Prologue: "After September 11, 2001, the U.S. military began using weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the War on Terror. This story is set in 2010, during the greatest escalation of targeted killings. Based on actual events."