This movie was playing in the bargain bin of my TV at 1 AM in the morning, which did not bode well for its quality. And while this is clearly not high-quality material, I am not entirely sure what to think of this movie. There is something interesting and different here.
The first half is a dreamy war movie. A man is recruited as a mercenary for a rescue job in Afghanistan. He is broke and has post war nightmares but agrees to put his team back together.
The second half of the movie is where things get weird. In Afghanistan the team eventually encounters paranormal dangers...and that is where the movie turns sour.
The camera work is not great, but it is OK. Some shots linger for longer than needed and some camera angles are questionable. It feels like there are inexperienced people working behind the scenes. However, the desert where the film was shot is pretty and the Middle-Eastern feeling carries over nicely.
The transition between shots starts making less and less sense towards the 2nd half; the story starts making less and less sense; the dialogue and character's actions start making less and less sense until the movie turns into an episode of a sci-fi channel show.
The acting is not bad. Michael Madon showed up for a paycheck and there are a few mid-tier actors, but the film becomes so poorly directed and written, that everyone starts either over-acting or under-acting.
Audiences have been indoctrinated to expect a fast-paced logical and sensible movie with a particular Hollywood structure and a specific genre, while this movie is a bit different from that norm. This is exactly the kind of movie you should experience alone, late at night, in a state of partial trance, and after it is over, you ask yourself what the hell you just experienced. In spite of it coming apart at the seams more and more, the movie actually kept my interest until the end.
At the same time, the film fails at what it tries to be. It starts out as a slow-cooking psychological war movie but it goes downhill from there until it becomes a z-movie thriller.
