Recensioni di Metacritic

While Kandahar is undoubtedly spectacular war cinema, it's also a weighty meditation on the seeming impossibility for some of walking away from conflict.

The dialogue is to the point without being eye-rolling, the action is meaty and mostly CGI-free (the highlight is a night-vision firefight) and the performances are committed, even touching.

It’s an action and suspense film, and, like Butler’s earlier 2023 flick “Plane,” a good one. Impressive set pieces include a car chase through a small-town bazaar, and a midnight shootout between Tom, outfitted with night-vision goggles, and a helicopter.

It’s a pleasure to see Butler do his thing opposite a talented array of international performers — Fazal and Fimmel are standouts — and stretch his specific set of skills into more complex contemporary storytelling, making “Kandahar” worth the trip

That Kandahar’s geopolitical ambiguity isn’t the richest is maybe to be expected, but paired with lame character dynamics, it sadly sells short the potential of Butler’s weary face under duress, something I’ll nonetheless keep returning to.

Kandahar is very much a box-ticking exercise, with Butler playing the same kind of hero — perhaps literally the same guy — he has built a career out of.

Where Kandahar is most intriguing is in the oddly even-handed depiction of both American and Middle-Eastern characters as largely exasperated professionals going about their grisly work because they’re too old to pivot to a different job.

As usual, Butler brings a convincing humanity and vulnerability to his action movie heroics.

None of the action scenes have any passion to them and, even worse, they can feel downright contrived. That it then pretends to have something more to say strains credulity.

Stupefyingly sluggish.