12 Strong Review

12 Strong (2018)

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Peña, William Fichtner

Directed By: Nicolai Fuglsig

Synopsis:

12 Strong tells the story of the first Special Forces team deployed to Afghanistan after 9/11; under the leadership of Captain Mitch Nelson, the team must work with and trust a Afghan warlord to take down for the Taliban.

Review:

Personally I really enjoyed this movie. It was good too see a film centred around the first special forces unit to touch down in Afghanistan and engage in combat with the Taliban. Chris Hemsworth does a Stellar job portraying Captain Mitch Nelson. Other than playing Thor I haven’t really seen much of Hemsworths other movies, well I did catch Red Dawn it was pretty good too. I think once he is done with the Marvel Universe he has so much potential to become an action star.

What makes this different to the other war movies that have been released is in this one the Americans team up with an Afghan Warlord and his group to take on the Taliban on horseback. The Taliban also seem a little more crafty with setting up ambushes and they come across as a big threat with some of the weaponry they have, ranging from rocket launchers to tanks to heavy duty missiles.

The rest of the team are all Likable characters and have their own standout moments, the Afghan Warlord is also a likeable character, who at first doesn’t see leadership and “that killer look” in the Captain’s eyes. From there we have a couple of debates about the way the Warlord does things and how the Captain does things. Eventually earning eachothers respect.

The main villain Razzan doesn’t really have much character development, we see him shoot a woman for educating her daughter’s who are above the age of 8, which is forbidden in the Taliban’s eyes. Apart from that you don’t really see much of Razzan until the final battle.

I found the battle sequences to be well shot and choreographed with intensity throughout them, with the film having an R rating there is plenty of bullet wounds and limbs flying etc to add to the realism. The final battle for sure was my favourite, the group come across the training camp where Razzan and his Taliban group are with numbers reaching near 50,000.

Overall the movie was fun and enjoyable to watch, it didn’t have as much tension as the likes of Hacksaw Ridge (which would definitely be in my top war movie list.) But it holds its own with the best of war movies. As in this movie there is the constant underlying feeling the Afghans are going to sell off the American troops to Taliban to claim the bounty that’s been issued on them.

Highly recommend watching! I look forward to see if Chris Hemsworth does take on more action roles, as he looks at home mowing down bad guys.

Reviewed By Jeff Turner