Why I Saw It: I couldn't let Battleship leave me on a sour note with Pete Berg.
Cast: Basically, this is a cast full of actors I'd like to see do more that I liked. Ok, maybe I see enough of Mark Wahlberg. This is in his wheelhouse though and I'll credit him for playing it better than in something like Planet of the Apes. Taylor Kitsch had a pretty disastrous 2012 so hopefully this will remind studios to give him another chance. Ben Foster reappears for the first time in what feels like years. Even Emile Hirsch who I am always ready to hate but can't follow through to does a good job. That's the core group and they look like Marines and act like Marines. Sadly, none of them are given a great deal of depth. Eric Bana, Alexander Ludwig, Jerry Ferrara, and a bunch of "other that guy"s have some smaller roles as well.
Plot: Four marines go on a mission to kill a Taliban leader. Things go awry. They try to survive long enough to be rescued. There's maybe a half hour of setup and the remainder of the movie is one extended battle sequence which I found to be a quite accomplished one. It was a chaotic mess which I think is the intent. I'd be afraid to here the death count because I'm sure they went a little crazy with the Marine sharpshooting effectiveness. The Taliban also had a surprisingly extensive supply of explosives, but all in all, I found it to be a satisfy sustained sequence. Toward the end, the survivor comes into contact with an anti-Taliban Afghan village with is a great move because a movie like this runs the risk of equating the two (Talinan/Afghan) as the same. I was actually quite moved by the scenes in that village at the end. It was cheap emotion, but they got me with it.
Elephant in the Room: America! Fuck Yeah! I'm sick of deification of the troops. It gets jingoistic very quickly and general leaves us with really boring characters. I've seen much worse cases of this, but the movie is book-ended by some major "Yay military" stuff which makes this feel like more of a love letter, than a movie. I appreciate that it skirts the political stuff since it is mostly an action movie, but the whole thing is pretty hollow. There's not a lot too it. They are killing a bad guy because that's their mission. That's it. It's pretty meaningless the way it is portrayed.
Movie Theater LVP (Least Valuable Patron) Award: I'd like to award this to the two old men sitting behind me who laughed every time a Tal-ee-ban got shot in the head. That repeatedly ruined the tone of the movie for me. This isn't The Expendables. Act like idiots at home.
To Sum Things Up:
I think enjoying this movie depends greatly on what you expected to get out of it. Luckily, I went in hoping for a good, tight action movie and that's what I got. I cannot stress enough, on a technical level, this is very well done. If you are looking for anything thematic to hold onto, you'll be sore out of luck. You'll leave the movie saying "what was the point of that?". Here's a good comparison. Imagine if Saving Private Ryan ended after the Normandy invasion.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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