12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers - Review

Here it is guys! The first movie of 2018 that I have seen and it's not a bad one to start off the year. The war genre is a genre that I really like. Films like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Fury, The Hurt Locker, Apocalypse Now, American Sniper, Platoon, and many more, I generally really like. Saving Private Ryan for instance is one of my favourite movies ever made (I have a review that film too). While 12 Strong (I'm not referring to it as it's entire title) doesn't rank up there with a heavy hitter like Saving Private Ryan, I would still recommend it to fans of the genre. However, I was not liking this film when it first started out. You see our main character played by Chris Hemsworth being all cute with his daughter and then watching the World Trade Centre attacks on the TV. Now, I mean no disrespect to the people who lost their lives in those attacks or to the families who suffered because of it, but I have to admit that it is a pretty cheap way for us to hate the villains. Luckily the film actually shows us the Taliban leader that this squad is going after later in the film and it shows him doing something unspeakably cruel, but I was sitting thinking in my seat, "Oh great, I can sense where this film is going." For the first 20 minutes or so, the film definitely went in the direction of the whole "American man goes to war leaving his wife and kids at home" type of story. Now, maybe it's because nobody in my direct family has ever been in the military or gone off to war or maybe it's because I'm Canadian, but the whole "America is the best and all soldiers are heroes" stuff is getting pretty old. Again, no disrespect to the people who lay their lives on the line for democracy to flourish, but in terms of a plot device in a film, it's getting old. However, the film redeems itself by doing something that many war films (at least the war films I know of) don't do. That is show Americans working along side the people of Afghanistan to help rid of the evil Taliban. Films like American Sniper, although maybe unintentional, paint all Arab people to be suicide bombing maniacs or people who are in every way inferior to the Americans. What this film does is show that not all Arab people are on the same side. The main Afghani general helping the Americans in this film has many great scenes with Chris Hemsworth discussing what it truly means to be a hero. We learn about how the Taliban not only made many American suffer that day where the World Trade Centre got hit, but we also learn of the struggles the Afghani people had to deal with with the Taliban in power. Sort of similar to how maybe a World War II film might show that not all Germans were Nazis. This film shows that not all Arabs were Taliban or Al-Qaeda. It's a great bon between Chris Hemsworth and the leader of the Afghani resistance. Lastly, I really enjoyed the combat in this film. Not only were the effects very well done, but I enjoyed how strategic it all seemed and how it was executed. It didn't seem very "Hollywood". Until the end of course, but hey, it IS a movie after all. I'm sure fans of Call of Duty are already in line to see every war movie that comes out now a days, but this is not a bad one to check out. I really enjoy the partnership between the Afghani rebels and Americans and the action scenes were a thrill to watch. So far, a good start to the year.