Kandahar

An OK movie with nice action scenes... Very flawed when it comes to script, and one of the worst jobs in soundtracking (songs have absolutely nothing to do with the scenes).

But acting is solid, it has nice visuals, camera work is nice, director does a reasonably good job.

You can watch it for the nice actions sequences and ok plot, but the movie is quite forgettable in terms of writing and does not know what it really wants...tries to focus on too many things (character drama, action, war, politics) but not cohesively.

Anyway...nice fun, nice action, but do not expect much more than that.

(I'm done but I still have to type a fewore characters before IMDb allows me to publish)

This is a perfectly good movie. The comparisons to The Covenant, Guy Ritchie's movie with Jake Gyllenhaal are understandable, and while there are some similarities, it is not a like for like by any means. There are in fact many differences. I won't spell them out for fear of giving spoilers, but if you watch both movies you will get my point. Gerard Butler does seem to be the go to guy for an awful lot of action movies over the last five plus years, but there is a good reason for that. He meets the requirements of a Hollywood hero very well; handsome, likeable, tough and and pretty decent actor for the most part. I enjoyed the movie and would recommend to anyone who likes action/military type movies.

Strong plot and promising action but falls short. Worth viewing if you like this type of film or Butler in general.

Butler's 'Tom Harris' and Fimmel's 'Roman' were strong, they provided high points. Bagheri's 'Parshand' didn't hit the mark.

Action scenes had moments of awesome. But odd timing of starts/stops during sequences made them confusing. Particularly when Roman rolls out of the vehicle during a pursuit scene.

Parshand pursuing main characters endlessly through the desert on a low range motorcycle was odd and not believable enough. Character did not seem ruthless. His scenes subtracted from the overall concept I was expecting and hoping for.

Butler is always good for the slick action movie, and has made a career as some of the most consistent action stars. While he never achieved anything compared to 300, it's hard to point a finger at a film that did not entertain.

Butler goes somewhat beyond his limited range in Kandahar with some success. There is a real attempt to create character and suspense, which is at points refreshing and at points boring. Nothing is revolutionary, the baddies get some lines of dialogue (be warned, you will have to read a lot of subtitles!) and there is some sad music playing, but that's about the extent of it. Richie's Covenant also tackles the same setting, with overall better results.

The ending is predictable and ridiculous, devolving into explosion city, but what did I expect?

There is about 20 mins to be cut from this, but it has enough going for it that I can forgive the draggy parts, and appreciate the attempt at substance.

7/10 - if your expectations are right...

On the pro side, the photography was beautiful. There were some gorgeous desert shots, fly-overs of the cars that were enjoyable in their own right. Fight scenes were realistic enough to feel the sense of danger. Even the music was good and kept me wanting to feel empathy for the characters, but here's were the problem was. I couldn't tell if I was supposed to be rooting for the main characters or disappointed that they were making the same mistakes of their past. The whistle-blower reporter, was she a heroine or an ignorant meddler? Did the black-ops group do something bad or good? The medley of Iranian operatives, ISIS, Talaban, and a host of others all had their vague "bad-ness" about them, trying to kill the main character, but then they were just being used as well, so maybe I was supposed to feel badly for them. Am I supposed to feel bad about being the US forces attacking Afganistan? Our calamity of a withdrawal? Or am I just supposed feel like war is a mess of conflicting allegiances and there are no more clear answers any more?

Filmography/editing got this a 6/10 instead of the 5/10 that the writing deserved.