Line of Fire

With relatively low budget, compared to bigger Hollywood productions, it's amazing to see what Roel Reiné pulled off as the movie director.

The storyline is interesting: going from the warzone, to back home with his family, into the court where he was tried (these three locations are the corner stones of this story).

It's a new take for a Dutch movie to have a strong focus on the PTSS diagnosis where main character Marco Kroon has to deal with after returning home from Afghanistan, and how it affects all around him.

The movie gave insight into the live of a veteran and caught my attention for two full hours.

Maybe the the real Marco Kroon may have done things in live that should not have happened but the context of the movie helps to understand more of it. As this was a movie (not a real documentary), it remains unclear as to what really happened and what is pure fiction. For me this was unimportant, I've tried to see the bigger picture here for veterans in general. And I believe the movie enables you to do so.

The Fire Line is a new war drama directed by Roel Reine, director of Michiel de Ruyter and Redbad.

After returning from his military service in Afghanistan, Marco Kroon (Waldemar Torenstra) receives the highest award in the Netherlands: the Military Order of William. Yet he struggles with trauma from everything he experienced during the war.

If he is later suspected of criminal activities such as drugs and arms trafficking, he runs the risk of losing his status rewards. Furthermore, his personal life also comes under fire. This also affects his relationship with his girlfriend Mirjam van den Hoven (Sallie Harmsen). Now he must confront his personal traumas again in a court case to prove his innocence.

The film is based on the story of Marco Kroon, who helped the Dutch army in the fight against the Taliban and other terrorist groups. Despite his heroic deeds, he and his lover later ended up in bad news. However, what exactly happened to him has never really been recorded. The dark stories, which he himself describes somewhat vaguely, remain for some an abnormal fantasy, or just lies. Due to a lack of details, the film itself is unable to provide a clear explanation of this. So the real story and this film adaptation continue to miss something, such as clearer details. The rest of the film also comes across as a standard war drama. If you are familiar with such films, this film may remain on the familiar side.

The characters, just like the real people on which they are based, work themselves in the wrong direction. They do this by being unclear or hiding the real truth from each other. Despite the drama that the characters experience, as a viewer you sympathize with them a little less, because as a viewer you never really get a clear answer to what exactly happened. Because of these unclear aspects, the film sometimes has its long-winded moments, or remains difficult to follow. The storytelling is also poorly balanced at times. While Marco Kroon is first accused of drug trafficking, the story tries to suppress these actions by suddenly bringing his traumatic war experiences into greater focus. What really happened to him in Afghanistan cannot be made official due to a lack of witnesses. So at the end of this film you can judge Marco Kroon's own story more for yourself, or just see it as a strong story.

The acting is well done. Waldemar Torenstra comes across believably as a soldier who experienced intense things during his military days and suffered some trauma from this. Because the exact truth is not known, these aspects may remain somewhat unclear. Sallie Harmsen also gives a fitting performance as Marco Kroon's partner. Mirjam van den Hoven also had her secrets. If the real people had been more honest and open with each other and the rest of the world, they could have had a more detailed story at the beginning of this film adaptation.

Mixed feelings about his movie, whether you enjoy it depends on your background as it is filled with historic, cultural and military inaccuracies that should have been spotted during production. For a movie claiming to be inspired by real events surrounding the individual Marco Kroon it is a loss that they were not able to accurately represent the recent historic environment which has been extensively documented.

Dutch movies are generally notoriously poorly produced, but there are worse productions than De Vuurlinie.

I must caveat that I am a veteran of ISAF and served in Tarin Kowt and Chora (at the White Compound), and the Baluchi valley around the period presented in the video. I admit that the movie was not made for me, but the faults in the movie are just too extensive to ignore.

For a movie claiming to be about Afghanistan they made some colossal blunders. The bad guys sport the ISIS flag which is absurd as the movie war bits take place in 2006 and IS did not yet have their flag in prominent use yet and IS had no presence in Afghanistan. IS are also the ideological opposites to the Taliban (different Islamic religious streams and the Taliban are hardliners for self-preservation of Afghanistan whereas IS wants world expansion). This goes to the extremes that these groups have been fighting each other (currently in the Korengal valley between the Taliban and the ISK)

Anyone with a superficial interest in regional culture or history can pick out that the Taliban and IS are very different groups. It is insane that the movie went this far into production with a colossal failure like this going unnoticed.

Now onto the production, please take a seat.

There is a lot of high quality historic special forces footage from Dutch patrols in the Uruzgan region which could have been used as reference. The locations in this movie however are mostly brick housing which the region did not have. Additionally, the White Compound in Chora is visualised as being a hangar (the system ceiling made me chuckle) meaning limited effort went into localization as well as these environments are also well documented.

Weaponry was poorly portrayed. 'Marco' carries an ill fitting SERPA pistol holster that is aimed upward and because it does not fit the Glock the trigger is exposed. This is a great way to shoot your buddy in the face, no Commando would ever walk around like this with gun barrels aiming upward and triggers exposed, it is just plain dumb and would be identified by anyone with any military experience.

It looks like the prop master had limited options for weaponry as well, the main machine gun being fired is an MG3 which is a German machine gun that the Netherlands does not use. This is sad because plenty of UK prop shops have area and period correct props such as the FNM240 (we call it the FN MAG) available for rent that could have resolved this. But this is just another example that any degree of (historic) accuracy was not a consideration.

The uniforms look okayish but are incomplete, lacking important details like badges, tactical gear. You also never see a backpack so I guess they are living out of their pockets. It looks like they just gathered what they had. It seems the costume department had a big bag of airsoft accessories as a lot of the portrayed weapons are obviously airsoft replicas and the Taliban can be seen running around in airsoft tactical vests without any attachments to them (did anyone in the production crew ever take a look at a picture of the Taliban?)

The tactics are a laugh as well, walking around with the Night vision monocular looking into street lights. No overwatch positions being taken but just sneaking in on foot into a not previously reconned village. It makes the tactics and fighting look more like a poor episode of the A team than a real war movie. This is sad because the reason Marco was decorated was because of his methodical approach in planning his operations and not having lost a single operator under his command. The movie does not portray this at all, the briefings are laughably short with zero regard to eventualities.

The music is a blatant ripoff from recognizable bits from Hans Zimmer with the ending song being an poor copy of the BlackHawkDown theme song, including the singing. This is hilariously bad, they should have just bought the rights to Zimmer's work instead of this insane copying (which is likely legally questionable as well). Zero points here as well.

Is it really this bad? As I said I don't think I am the intended audience and from a military, cultural and historic perspective it is apparent that very little effort went into making this about TaskForce Viper/66 or Afghanistan. I doubt they had any experts on hand, and neither did they care about experts leading to so many mistakes in every scene portraying Afghanistan. It is obvious they simply did not care to portray Afghanistan, the Taliban or TaskForce Viper in a realistic way.

For the overall story line, this is amusing and better than most Dutch movies (which are generally of a very poor quality and I'd rarely give something a 6 out of 10). I think it will appease to most Dutch viewers as long as they didn't have high expectations or previous knowledge about the ISAF mission of Afghanistan. If you instead want to learn about what it was like in ISAF/OEF there are way better movies out there.

Another saving grace is Pierre Bokma's performance as General van Uhm, this was spot on regarding acting and personality, he had limited scenes but they were the strongest acting in the movie.

If they had spent a little bit more effort in portraying the reason why Marco Kroon was decorated, and using archive footage of Afghanistan as reference this could have many much, much better.

It's an inside story on the things the Dutch Special forces did in Afghanistan. And the life of Marco Kroon after his deployment. Included the accusations about drug usage and selling. And the relation with his wife. And what effect the deployment had on his family as a whole. Very well made movie. And good acting. The movie is based on two of the books Marco Kroon wrote. For every ex-military a must see. And also for people who are interested what could happen in Afghanistan or on other military mission around the world. Seen in my local VUE movie theater on the biggest screen available. Go see it!

The movie starts a bit slow but a lot of recognition, to the end the events brought tears to my eyes. Every veteran has a story to tell, even if it is a very sad one, take the time to listen. For a Dutch movie, no Hollywood budget, it was pretty good, actors did a great job too. Although the movie is based on facts, fiction was added for the screen, I still think it is very realistic story. When a soldier comes home after a mission, the mission at home starts and it effects everyone in the family. Remember that next time you meet a veteran that has served his country, they have seen and been through things no one should see or go through.