12 Strong review: Chris Hemsworth's simplistic post-9/11 western lacks basic horse sense
Director: Nicolai Fuglsig. Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Peña, Trevante Rhodes, Navid Negahban, William Fichtner, Elsa Pataky, Austin Stowell, Taylor Sheridan. 15 cert, 130 mins
12 Strong could probably have been called Horse Soldiers, and maybe should have been. That was the title of Doug Stanton’s non-fiction book, about the first-wave response of US Special Forces and paramilitaries in kick-starting the war on terror. Immediately after 9/11, a dozen of these green beret types became Task Force Dagger, their mission to join forces with an Afghan general in the mountainside, and strike at the heart of the Taliban leadership.
Horseback, given the problems of their terrain, was the only option, and in they rode, as played here by ever-hearty leading man Chris Hemsworth and a well-curated supporting cast. Their base of operations is nicknamed the Alamo – an unconsoling moniker, as someone points out, given the famous obliteration of American troops at said stronghold. They bide their time, the dust kicks up and the sand swirls.
Playing at times like a virtual clone of the Magnificent Seven remake, the film is well aware of its genre precedents, and happy to style itself, with aggressive banter and touches of flag-waving, as a post-millennial update on the cavalry western.
A poor one. However many allowances you want to make for formula scripting in a US war drama – they’re normally the only way forward – it’s very disappointing to see Ted Tally, an Oscar-winner for his magnificent Silence of the Lambs screenplay, co-credited here.
You could pretty much feed this saga through a machine and get the same level of chatter and characterisation: the soldier wastefully given to Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes is defined almost wholly, for instance, by his fondness for lollies, and when he gives one to a young Afghan lad, it’s a cheap grope for empathy right out of the Michael Bay playbook.
More seriously, the film has no desire to question the stakes of America’s counter-attack or anything beyond a might-is-right, tit-for-tat philosophy throughout. It’s phenomenally basic.
Before being flung across the screen by B-52 bomb blasts, the Taliban troops are easily spotted as an indefinable mass of scowling extras, while Task Force Dagger’s Afghan allies crack jokes and are even partial to swigging vodka, so we know they’re not a lost cause. There’s a ruggedly compelling performance from Navid Negahban as their leader, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who later became the country’s Vice-President.
None of the film’s limitations would have mattered so much if it was a more viscerally powerful viewing experience, along the lines of Bay’s abstractly scorching Benghazi epic 13 Hours. It’s the debut feature from Danish photojournalist Nicolai Fuglsig – best known for that Sony Bravia advert with the coloured balls bouncing down on San Francisco – and he is only beginning to acquaint himself with the default playbook of producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
There are some memorable fly-by shots, and isolated images of destruction stick out, but the film’s pace is sluggish and faltering where it ought to be lean and mean: it never feels like a worthwhile investment of your time, or really anyone’s.
Michael Shannon and Michael Peña, in stock roles, do the gruff thing we expect of them, but neither seem tested or especially rewarded by the relentless, suspenseless combat. 12 Strong passes by doggedly and in a haze, a theatre of war which gives us back row seats rather than throwing us properly into the thick of things. Task Force Dagger’s mission, declassified a few years back, hardly illuminates anything for us here.
