Movie Review: Kandahar

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B

A well made war thriller. 

As many of you know lately Gerald Butler has been making mostly dumb turn your mind off action flicks. This movie tries to do much more than just provide some fun action (though it does that too) and what is most surprising is that for the most part this works quite well. The main two characters here are not the bland movie stereotypes you might expect. In fact as much as Gerald Butler's character is the hero of this story, he also does quite a bit that is not exactly the most moral course of action. This adds a layer to depth to this character, without ever going too far as to make the character completely unlikable. His translator starts off feeling like a bland character, but as the film goes on and we learn more about him, we see he is quite a bit more. This movie also takes a surprisingly intelligent look at today's wars. At one point a character states that he feels like wars today are not meant to be won. Yet this movie doesn't only state this idea but it shows it as well and by the end of the film we are wondering about the same thing. Yet most people came to this movie for the action and on this count the film does not disappoint. Though it takes a while to get to the major action scenes, they are just as well staged and exciting as action movie fans hoped they would be. They are also only enhanced by the depth of the two main characters. 

This movie does certainly have its problems though. Though the two main characters have some depth to them, every other character is simply bland and uninteresting. Many of them even feel more like plot devices than actual characters. One man on a motorcycle is obviously supposed to be a major character but he is easy to completely forget about when he is not on screen. There are also too many plot points that are brought up and simply brushed off. Some of them are never mentioned again and some appear so little that when a conclusion comes for them, we completely forgot about them. This is also another film that tries to add a bit of family drama, without showing much of the family and this makes certain scenes not as emotionally effective as they should have been.

All in all this is a good movie. Despite any faults, it is gives the audience exactly what they want and in some cases even more than the expected.