Ultimate Patrol

After watching this movie I came straight back on IMDb to see if I could make sense of what I had just watched. But after reading all the comments so far, I am none the wiser. It definitely did remind me of 'Blair Witch In The Desert' (with an Apocalypse Now style narration throughout) albeit without the hand camera so at least you don't feel queasy at the end, just a tad confused

Having said that, it did command my attention until the end, and I did enjoy it. After about 1/2 an hour its pretty obvious that the ending isn't going to be neatly wrapped up so it shouldn't leave you too disappointed

Afghanistan November 2001 and the Taliban who have ruled the country under a jackboot for several years have been ousted . A CIA operative is embedded with an American special forces team and leads them on a secret mission in the South of the country . After a fire fight with the Taliban where several insurgents are killed the SF team are puzzled in finding the bodies of the dead have disappeared , almost as if they'd never existed

I've got to put my hand up and say I knew this was a cross genre movie before I watched it . If you're expecting a straight laced action thriller set in the 'Stan then you might be surprised as to where this is heading . Director Daniel Myrick does play up to the film being set in a very real time and place , giving the movie an almost documentary look with hand-held cameras and cinema verite style but this isn't how the film progresses

Foreshadowing is a difficult thing . Play your hand too soon and the audience might be one step ahead of the characters and boredom sets in , play it too late and the audience will feel cheated so the writers deserve some credit in keeping the audience intrigued . I did have a rough idea where everything was heading and was still interested , though wasn't entirely gripped . Some credit too for bringing in a little bit of past history to Afghanistan involving Alexander The Great's ill fated expedition to the country and the reference of the British retreat from Kabul in the 19th Century . A graveyard of empires indeed

Everything's chugging along nicely and THE OBJECTIVE is a engaging little horror/war film with some good locations and a small non star cast . The problem lies in the last five minutes which I had difficulty in understanding . Again it's not down too much or too little foreshadowing but the fact it remains unexplained which diluted my enjoyment of the film slightly which I was enjoying up to this point

Every country in the world has a collected storehouse of stories involving Ghosts, Goblins and things which go bump in the night. In the far East, from the tall rugged mountains of Afghanistan, comes this legendary tale of violent death which re-surfaced in the 21st century. The movie is called " Objective " and tentatively based on the legendary incident, concerning one Dr. William Brydon otherwise known as 'The Massacre at Khourd Caboul.' writer/Director Daniel Myrick tells the story of a C.I.A. operative, Benjamin Keynes (Jonas Ball) who is given a covert assignment to venture into the mountains of Afganistan and find a mystic leader named Mohammad Aban who possess special information concerning the area. Accompanying him will be an elite military team, led by Chief Warrant Officer Wally Hamer (Matt Anderson) and a local guide named Abdul (Chems Zinoune). What begins as a routine reckon mission to find and deliver a mystic leader, develops into a mysterious search, destroy and survive encounter with an ancient, but very powerful stellar phenomenon. The movie endeavors to enthrall an audience with crude scenes imitating 'Close Encounters and Predator. With a stiff narration and a poor story-line, the cast tries its best but fails on several levels. Still, it is an interesting movie, if one doesn't expect too much. I would have thought the original story of the British Massacre would have been a better investment. ***

"The Objective" is a really cool movie. You have a CIA agent working with military men in Afghanisthan, and weird, paranormal stuff happens. There's a sense of realism - which was probably Myrick's objective - that is very well done here. You feel like you're there with the guys, in that immense, isolated, mysterious space.

It's this sense of immersion and the suspense that propells me to give this movie a 6/10, purely because I really enjoyed it. But that's not to say it is without flaws; au contraire, the story is like a mechanical swiss cheese, with obvious, unavoidable and perhaps intentional plot holes - the problem is that some of them nearly ruined the film for me, and will certainly ruin it for the casual science-fiction fan.

So there you have it - I liked this movie and I'd recommend it - but I feel this movie could have been so much better if not for some serious flaws.

The painfully obvious first one is the narration, done by the main actor. Actually, there are two problems here - the protagonist seems miscast, or at least the actor seems to have a speech impediment problem. I'm not joking, he doesn't narrate, he... mumbles. I hope this was not intentional.

One complaint that I've seen in other reviews, but for me would be nit-picking, are about some of the visual effects. Not the FX themselves, but rather the use of them. Like many I feel some things are best left to our imaginations, and this movie is a nice example of getting this sort of thing wrong.

There's a fantastic scene in the middle of the movie that involves binoculars. In this scene, the "leave it to the imagination" part is incredibly scary. Here, it works. Later on, not so much.

I will only further comment on the ending, and I don't have many words to describe my reaction. In a way, it's a genius ending, and in another, you feel like you've been made a fool of. It's usually good to be left with a mystery, but sometimes it pisses people off, and sadly, this is the case with me and "The Objective".

I know I'll watch it again, though.

6/10

The Objective is, in many ways, reminiscent of science-fiction movies of old, particularly the 70s. But whether it was intentional of Daniel Myrick or it simply is a coincidence, I wouldn't know. One thing is for sure, the real magic and strength of older science-fiction classics is not fully conjured here.

This small-budget movie's premise is simple but opens many possibilities. An elite military commando is sent on a mission in the tensed, war-torn present-day Afghanistan. They are led by a mysterious government operative. Their "Objective" is relatively unclear but considering the risks taken, the stakes must be high. As the story unfolds, the mystery remains and the plot thickens but we are still left with a sour taste as the development and tension doesn't pay off much.

There's a mish-mash of elements here that have been a success in other works and movies. Shades of The Andromeda Strain. Shades of Aliens. Shades of Space Odyssey, of Altered States and of old Bermuda Triangle Movies. More than anything, with just a little rework, this could have been a solid X-Files movie. CIA agent Ben Keynes could easily become FBI agents Mulder and Scully, which would have made things much more dynamic.

One of the biggest problem The Objective suffers from is an underdeveloped protagonist and cardboard peripheral characters. One of the secrets to the success of Aliens is that James Cameron, in a much busier storyline, was able to present his space marines as more than mere Alien-hamburgers. In just a few lines, or a few silent frames, we are exposed to colorful personalities and the various interactions between them. In The Objective, not only are the special force members absolutely bland, but they don't even interact in interesting ways with the plot or the main character. When a film-maker introduces characters that are obvious plot tools, I call this weak film-making. But when such characters aren't even effective tools, I call this awful film-making. And that's unfortunately the case here.

As for the actual plot... suffice it to say it is intriguing. A few hints are given here and there in the movie that might help figure out what the shocking resolution means. We are firmly in speculative science-fiction at times, much like old sci-fi. This makes this flawed movie a valid entry for fans of the genre but others would be better off passing.

This is still a solid effort by Daniel Myrick and commendable on an $8,000,0000 budget. But it seems a less ambitious, more tightly knit plot would have been preferable over too large a scope.