12 Strong (2018)
Directed by Nicolai Fuglsig
A team of special forces head into Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks in an attempt to dismantle the Taliban.
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25 films that influenced 12 Strong
What critics say influenced 12 Strong
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.
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“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 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.
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“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.