12 Strong is based off of a true story and stars Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pena and Trevante Rhodes from Moonlight as a US special forces Strike Team who go into Afghanistan after September 11 to try to liberate some of its captured areas but the terrain is so harsh they have to do it via horseback and a cavalry attack is one they will be determined to do.
I quite liked this movie for three key reasons:
- First the ensemble group is quite good here, it sure is nice to see Mr Hemsworth getting a chance to do something a little different besides being Thor and doing comedy work which he is very good at doing I must add and I like to compare him to Mel Gibson in terms of his performance abilities and far less so the personal stuff and that both are very charismatic, very funny and very talented and part of me wishes that he would get some of the same opportunities Mel got with films like Hamlet, Air America and Tequila Sunrise among others where he got to show audiences that there was more to him than just Mad Max or Martin Riggs.
As for Mr Shannon and Mr Pena they are their usual reliable selves but another stand was Trevante Rhodes with this and Moonlight he shows himself to be the complete package as a potential leading man as here he was tough and in Moonlight he showed a very sensitive side to him so hopefully he will get the chance to take the lead in a big film one day as he will do that job very well.
- Secondly the film has some very good action sequences and a little bit like Dunkirk from last year they make good use of the cinema’s sound system and they are very easy to follow, make good use of some neat camera angles and have some real punch to them though there was one point where I thought “I’m not going to get a cavalry charge scene” and then I did and I was very happy though the one in the Lighthorsemen from 1987 is pretty damn hard to top.
- And lastly this was a very interesting war story albeit about a very recent and still very raw period of our history and as someone who remembers what the state of the world was like during that period it felt partially eerie to see some of the archive footage from those days and a recreation of the mindset that came after that day and it felt as I said a little raw still to revisit that and it was for me at least very interesting.
And so that was 12 Strong an interesting and nicely made War film that isn’t the best film you’ll see but one that I enjoyed quite a bit and would recommend seeing, 3 and a half out of 5.
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