12 Strong

12 Strong
The Jerry Bruckner-produced, fact-based action-er starring Chris Hemsworth is simplistic but rousing and red-state ready By Todd McCarthy

Set in Afghanistan just after 9/11, when a dirty dozen American Special Forces operatives were dropped in to take down Taliban and al-Qaida perpetrators, this entertaining, mildly risible real-life-inspired yarn comes
off as much like a Western as a modern war film — right down to having the Americans ride into battle on horseback. This may be the first big studio release that feels like it was made by and for Trump’s America, which could mean muscular business in red states.

Apart from the Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure sequels, this is also the first feature that feels like a real Jerry Bruckheimer production in at least a decade.

It’s got it all: the military swagger, the high-tech hardware and the one-dimensional approach to character, geopolitics and military adventurism. Go, USA!
The film is based on an action, fully detailed for the first time in Doug Stanton’s 2009 book, Horse Soldiers, that was long classified — a risky incursion of Americans, along with Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum’s Northern Alliance of Afghan fighters, into the Taliban-controlled northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif. The objective was clear: Take the town,
and you control the North.

With Thor himself, aka Chris Hemsworth, leading the charge, how can the outcome be in doubt? Still, as Hemsworth’s Capt. Mitch Nelson puts it, “There is no playbook here. We’re gonna have to write it ourselves.” A few team members are played by recognizable actors — Michael
Shannon, Michael Pena and Trevante Rhodes — but little effort is made to differentiate them, so it’s Hemsworth’s show and he’s up to the task: charismatic, confident, jokey, a Kentucky boy who just wants to get the job done and return to his wife and daughter.
The script by Ted Tally (The Silence of the Lambs) and Peter Craig (two Hunger Games entries) is tight. The biggest challenge for some of the Americans was the one thing they weren’t trained for: riding horses, the ordinary means of transport in this difficult terrain. All the same, the tone is familiar and unvarying — it’s all macho, all the time. Danish commercials wiz Nicolai Fuglsig, directing his first feature, does
a capable job getting the action convincingly on the screen.

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