Film: Kandahar (Amazon Prime Release)
Cast: Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal, Bahador Foladi, Tom Rhys Harries, and Nina Toussaint-White
Director: Rice Roman Waugh
Rating: 2/5
Runtime: 112 mins
This film isn’t the juicy, action-packed movie that one expects action star Gerard Butler to star in. This is a film that wants to have its geopolitics taken seriously. Unfortunately, it`s not interestingly presented nor does it have enough tension, action, or smarts to keep you invested and interested throughout.
In this picture, director Rice Roman Waugh ( “Angel Has Fallen” and “Greenland”), has Butler play Tom Harris, a CIA black ops agent who we first see planting explosives to disrupt Iran’s nuclear preparedness. This sort of storyline is well in keeping with America’s attempts to stay numero uno in the nuclear arms race. Harris and his partner do the job successfully and are all set to stealthily move out of the country…but Harris, who is addicted to his profession, is waylaid by another assignment in neighboring Afghanistan and his half-hearted attempt to get back in time for his daughter’s graduation might be in jeopardy.
The script by Michelle LaFortune basically recycles elements and ingredients from several other recent movies (including the Gerard Butler starer ‘Plane’). So there’s very little that’s original or creative here. The development is rather stale. One expects Harris to not catch his plane to Gatwick (even after his estranged wife reveals her infidelity, suggests divorce, and advises him to give priority to their daughter), and that’s exactly what happens. His teaming up with an Afghan translator, Mo (Navid Negahban), who takes the job mainly because he needs the money to search for his wife’s missing sister, maybe a new slant on the ‘East bonds with West despite obvious differences’ construct but it feels rather contrived. Then there’s this war room somewhere in the USA where the CIA Bosses are dictating and commenting on the play captured by drone cameras on the site. It almost feels like they are watching a sports telecast and commenting on random sporting feats.
There’s a lot of lip service being paid to opposing ideologies too. When Tom seeks resuscitation at a Militia camp with a tribal leader of his acquaintance, we hear the leader opine “The harder you try to stamp out an ideology, the stronger it becomes.” When Mo recognizes the Tribal leader as the one who was responsible for his son’s death he tries to make Tom understand that much of the misery in the region is because of US interference. But that feels like a futile exercise at best. The script does not go beyond the cursory and even Ali Fazal who gets a fair amount of screen time here as the well-spoken Pakistani ISI agent with Taliban connections, sent to assassinate Tom, has little to do other than give chase on a motorbike through the undulating, unremitting desert.
The action is sporadic, there’s not much depth or tension in this telling, the performances are fairly bland and the cinematography goes from stunning to obscure. The story lacks a strong central villain and the generic ones are too separative to raise the bar on any confrontation. The action scenes, therefore, fail to provide thrills. Director Rice Roman Waugh imprints the narrative with slickness and style, but the complete lack of substance is its undoing. There’s really nothing special to look forward to in this experience!
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