Nicolai Fuglsig
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But in the end, the John Wayne film that 12 Strong most reminds one of is not Back to Bataan or Fort Apache or The Alamo, but The Green Berets, not for its filmmaking qualities — Danish commercials whiz Nicolai Fuglsig, directing his first feature, and fellow countryman cinematographer Rasmus Videbaek do a capable and vigorous job getting the action convincingly on the screen — but for its simplistic, one-dimensional politics and lack of of historical perspective.
Hemsworth plays the straightest action himbo since John Wayne in 1968’s The Green Berets (that dim-witted propaganda was to the Vietnam War what 12 Strong is to…
Worse, it actually invites comparison with Wayne’s reprehensible, shameless Vietnam recruiting film The Green Berets, which he starred in and co-directed with veteran second unit director Ray Kellog and an unbilled Mervyn LeRoy.
And they seem to fall into either one of two categories: shameless shoot-em-up videogames draped in patriotic bunting (American Sniper, Act of Valor) or more sober and nuanced examinations of what it means to fight (Zero Dark Thirty, Restrepo).
The movie does a good job at what it sets out do and will likely please the target demographic (those who have appreciated other recent patriotic films like American Sniper and Lone Survivor ).
The same grit and intensity that were found in Lone Survivor , American Sniper and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi are on offer here with Dostum telling Nelson: "You don't have the stomach for everything I know."
Despite Hemsworth’s towering stature, he is routinely overshadowed in his scenes with Iranian actor Navid Negahban (Showtime’s Homeland, American Sniper) as an Afghan warlord whose cooperation the Americans need.
American Sniper , the best of the lot, ignored Chris Kyle’s fabulism, forfeiting possible insight into the psychology of a self-made culture-wars hero.
As proven by, among others, “American Sniper,” that sector is huge.
(You might compare it to pictures made about the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo—like 1944’s “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” an accomplished morale-booster.)
The movie does a good job at what it sets out do and will likely please the target demographic (those who have appreciated other recent patriotic films like American Sniper and Lone Survivor).
The same grit and intensity that were found in Lone Survivor , American Sniper and 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi are on offer here with Dostum telling Nelson: "You don't have the stomach for everything I know."
Set in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and styling itself as a portrayal of the first victory in the War on Terror — a bittersweet milestone to celebrate, given that said war hasn’t ended and we certainly haven’t won it — Nicolai Fuglsig’s film (full title: “12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers”) injects some rah-rah patriotism into the January multiplex à la “Lone Survivor” and “13 Hours” before it.
It was followed in later Januarys by Zero Dark Thirty (2013), Lone Survivor (2014), American Sniper (2015), and 13 Hours (2016).
Based on the declassified true story of the first 12 U.S. soldiers dropped into Afghanistan, all of whom are forced to fight on horseback like a wild west Cavalry unit circa 1890, 12 Strong is a well made, moderately overwrought military drama almost certain to play well with those who helped make efforts like Lone Survivor and American Sniper box office hits.
“12 Strong,” which was shot in New Mexico and is based on the book “Horse Soldiers” by Doug Stanton, is a patriotic, violent, profane and visually majestic war movie with beats resembling Clint Eastwood’s great 2014 smash “American Sniper” and even references David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece “Lawrence of Arabia.”
“12 Strong” doesn’t allow him the same range, which brings to mind another actor rising in prominence: John Cena, who made his silver-screen debut with “The Marine,” another military drama, but has found far more success in comic roles.
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
Directed by Michael Curtiz
influenced 12 Strong (2018)
Visuals
The climactic cavalry charge is good, but not as good as Michael Curtiz’s 1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade (and before we’re inundated with emails, I am not defending Curtiz’s indefensible use of the “running W” trip wires which were used to engineer the horse falls and resulted in the destruction of scores of horses).
What we have here is a movie more on par with the John Wayne movie Sands of Iwo Jima, directed by cinema pioneer Allan Dwan, which was made five years after World War II but felt like a propaganda recruitment vehicle.
“12 Strong” is “We Were Soldiers” in Afghanistan, accurate, flag-waving and intentionally and myopically incomplete.
The movie’s attempts to tie in the war at home don’t work, in stark contrast to Randall Wallace’s We Were Soldiers, in which separate timelines were juxtaposed by intercutting the sequences set in Vietnam with sequences involving the soldiers’ wives which took place as much as a week or two later.
Movies like The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen once pulled this off much better, giving each character an identifying trait (knife-throwing, being Ernest Borgnine, etc.) to help us pick them out when the action gets hairy.
After all, Bruckheimer is the veteran super-producer who brought us “Crimson Tide” and “Black Hawk Down,” but who also was responsible for “Pearl Harbor.”
’12 Strong’ carries a wide number of cinematic traits found in his other films, both good and bad, and it won’t be hard to draw lines between this new movie and others with the Bruckheimer brand, like “Black Hawk Down” and “Pearl Harbor” (both of which, it’s worth noting, came out in 2001).
Pearl Harbor ('01) shot them into the past.
And they seem to fall into either one of two categories: shameless shoot-em-up videogames draped in patriotic bunting ( American Sniper , Act of Valor ) or more sober and nuanced examinations of what it means to fight ( Zero Dark Thirty , Restrepo ).
It tells the story of Task Force Dagger, comprised of a dozen elite soldiers tasked with striking the first blow to the Taliban alongside an Afghan general (Navid Negahban) who hates his countrymen in the tenuous Northern Alliance almost as much as he hates their shared enemy; their joint mission, though not as cloak-and-dagger as the one dramatized in “Zero Dark Thirty,” nevertheless comes with a high chance of failure as they seek to reclaim the Taliban-occupied city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
It was followed in later Januarys by Zero Dark Thirty (2013), Lone Survivor (2014), American Sniper (2015), and 13 Hours (2016).
Lacking is the sort of insight and perspective that informed Kathryn Bigelow’s vastly superior Zero Dark Thirty.
Ably directed by first-timer Nicolai Fuglsig (from Denmark), the film follows the lead of such war films as American Sniper , Lone Survivor , Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty where the priority is the celebration of battlefield courage, not political analysis.
It’s when the men get to the Middle East that the film becomes truly gripping, thanks to an ominous score, a hair-raising helicopter ride that rivals moments in Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty,” and the inherent tension of a mission that, as Nelson puts it, has no playbook.
Before Steven Spielberg shot Saving Private Ryan, which probably remains the gold standard of Hollywood war movies, he watched hours upon hours of World War II combat footage, and as a result his own action footage was traumatizingly realistic.
If there’s anything that great war films like “Saving Private Ryan” or “The Hurt Locker” have taught us, it’s that victory in combat doesn’t look like a street-fight action movie set in a wilderness hellhole.
That said, my only big complaint is that I usually found myself feeling like an observer watching from a distance rather than the "you are there" experience that Steven Spielberg created in "Saving Private Ryan."
While not as outrageously xenophobic as Michael Bay’s 13 Hours might have been, there are still instances where Fuglsig goes out of his way to make Taliban leaders look like Rambo: First Blood Part II or Missing in Action villains, adding a level of cartoonish exploitation that honestly wasn’t necessary.
Working from a screenplay by Ted Tally (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and Peter Craig (“The Town”), director Nicolai Fuglsig delivers an action drama that gets the job done without ever catching fire.
Surprisingly stolid and barren for a Bruckheimer production, 12 Strong skates by on the virtues of an old-fashioned programmer: technical competence, an above-average cast, and well-written dialogue, the latter courtesy of screenwriters Ted Tally ( The Silence Of The Lambs ) and Peter Craig ( Blood Father ).
On the other, if screenwriters Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (Blood Father, The Town) were going to alter events for dramatic purpose in any case, they perhaps could have done something about the dialogue – we don’t need our onscreen protagonists to communicate solely in macho clichés even if their real life counterparts (possibly) do.
He’s especially effective, no doubt, because of the script by Ted Tally (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and Peter Craig, who along with others wrote “The Town.”
Directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, and written by Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (The Town), 12 Strong seems more emblematic of its producer, Jerry Bruckheimer.
Perhaps the unsung hero in all this is its screenwriter Ted Tally, who mastered finding the heart amid tales of slow-burning menace in his Oscar-winning script for “The Silence of the Lambs” and its sequel, “Red Dragon.”
Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)
Directed by George P. Cosmatos
influenced 12 Strong (2018)
Characters
While not as outrageously xenophobic as Michael Bay’s 13 Hours might have been, there are still instances where Fuglsig goes out of his way to make Taliban leaders look like Rambo: First Blood Part II or Missing in Action villains, adding a level of cartoonish exploitation that honestly wasn’t necessary.
After all, Bruckheimer is the veteran super-producer who brought us “Crimson Tide” and “Black Hawk Down,” but who also was responsible for “Pearl Harbor.”
Leave the handwringing about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the politicians and more nuanced films like "Stop-Loss" or "The Hurt Locker."
If there’s anything that great war films like “Saving Private Ryan” or “The Hurt Locker” have taught us, it’s that victory in combat doesn’t look like a street-fight action movie set in a wilderness hellhole.
And they seem to fall into either one of two categories: shameless shoot-em-up videogames draped in patriotic bunting ( American Sniper , Act of Valor ) or more sober and nuanced examinations of what it means to fight ( Zero Dark Thirty , Restrepo ).
War never goes out of fashion as a cinematic staple; even during the Obama-era, Lone Survivor, Act of Valor and 13 Hours flew the flag for the brave US soldier as global policeman.
Working from a screenplay by Ted Tally (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and Peter Craig (“The Town”), director Nicolai Fuglsig delivers an action drama that gets the job done without ever catching fire.
The script is credited to Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (The Town), but I refuse to believe these two are the only people who touched the script.
He’s especially effective, no doubt, because of the script by Ted Tally (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and Peter Craig, who along with others wrote “The Town.”
Directed by Nicolai Fuglsig, and written by Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (The Town), 12 Strong seems more emblematic of its producer, Jerry Bruckheimer.
Directed by Danish photojournalist Nicolai Fuglsig, with a brisk, efficient script by "Silence of the Lambs" screenwriter Ted Tally and "The Town" screenwriter Peter Craig, "12 Strong" unfolds as a procedural, taking protocol and bureaucracy swiftly in stride.
Based on the screenplay from Ted Tally (“The Silence of the Lambs”) and Peter Craig (“The Town”)—itself inspired by Doug Stanton’s book “Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan”—“12 Strong” eventually feels overlong and repetitive.