Kandahar Review: Starring Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal, Bahador Foladi, Nina Toussaint-White and others, the Ric Roman Waugh directorial is now finally landing its OTT premiere on Prime Video. The American action thriller has been written by Mitchell LaFortune, with MacGregor as the cinematographer and David Buckley provides the music.
It has a runtime of approximately 2 hours.
Kandahar Review Does Not Contain Spoilers
Kandahar Review: Discussion
When Tom Harris, a covert CIA operative’s cover is blown during his mission, an escape plan is hatched for him and his interpreter Mohammad “Mo” Doud (Navid Nehgaban) through the harsh Afghani geopolitical terrain. And as the catchphrase of the movie suggests “the only thing more dangerous than the mission is the escape”, the following plot uncovers the struggles this duo has to grapple with in order to make it out alive against several enemy forces on his tail, some even attempting to sell him on the blackmarket to the highest bidder possible.
The film starts off with a mission centred in Iran, and the one thought pushing Butler’s character through it all is his desire to catch a flight to his daughter’s graduation. Visually speaking, the desert landscape offers an authentic hold over the storyline and its context grounded in reality. However, the subsequent revelation of the characters therein lead you to and underwhelming understanding that the force driving Butler’s character isn’t enough to root for him, rather it’s through Navid Nehgaban’s character that we get a better insight into families fractured due to this side of violence.
Instead, other characters like his Afghan interpreter and Ali Fazal essaying the charismatic motor bike-riding Pakistani agent, who’s tired of working his missions in the desert but is still sent out by the ISIS to capture Tom, are more compelling than the protagonist himself. Butler, on the other hand, keeps on a restrained outlook throughout the entirety of the runtime in order accord his character with a sense of gravitas. However, it ends up working completely against him. The narrative of his motives and purpose in the story turns out be a drowsy over-stretched POV.
Revving up the engines to initiate the discourse around the sense of morality that guides men to the warfront, or how extremist conditioning plays into encouraging young crowds. Women are also often brought into the conversation, especially with how such a politically severe terrain pushes them under the load of atrocities that eventually become deeply entwined with their identities. Unfortunately, that’s the end to it. They’re barely actually brought on camera to speak for themselves and stay missing out in action.
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At the end of the movie, a farewell montage sequence plays out, reminding the ones left behind of all that is lost while also connecting them with what lied ahead for them. This is possibly the only major timeframe when women are actually included in the narrative visibly, but again as passive bystanders despite their names fuelling the tokenistic conversation at hand led by men.
While philosophically, the image of Tom and Mo making their escape to safety is fuelled by the layered conversation around the characters looking deep inside and trying to free themselves from the mental hell brewing within, the journey doesn’t quantify the extent of that sentiment. In spite of the flawed package, the one thing I still came to appreciate in this release is that fictionality of the context is busted to some extent as compared to other movies that have often merely picked on Afghanistan as the locational backdrop to push for a stuck-up and one dimensional understanding of the situation.
If only a bit more had been in that direction of building up on this case and the deglorification of the militant jargon that is otherwise many a times only used for the purpose of skewed aestheticism, the result could’ve reeled out a better output.
Kandahar: Final Thoughts
If you end up chancing upon this release only to ease your pining for blockbuster spy movies like Mission Impossible, James Bond or others, then this one isn’t going to appease you. While Kandahar ends up dealing out a rather dismaying storyline, with minimal praise-worthy action sights, it’s fuelled by a sense of verisimilitude in terms of the actual harsh barrenness of reality and how the lives of real life spies is impacted in the end, and it’s nothing to be romanticised about.
Despite this closer to ground depiction of some aspects, it still stays aloof from roots of the discussions it merely throws in as lip-service. If you’re one who likes to delve into violent international affairs of this theme, it may be a suitable watch for you, but it may no necessarily be one that entertains you or leaves you with enough to ponder about.
Kandahar premieres on Amazon Prime Video on June 16, 2023.
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