Kandahar
Gerard Butler plays a CIA operative on the run in Afghanistan, but the formula remains the same…
Lost in translation: Navid Negahban and Gerard Butler
We live in frightening times and films like Kandahar really don’t help. A covert CIA operation to blow up a nuclear plant in Iran is just the starting point for what is a dramatic minefield of sensitive material. Gerard Butler is wheeled in as a Scottish operative, formerly in the employ of MI6, who still prefers risking his life in the field rather than being stuck behind a desk in Edinburgh. He’s going through a divorce, too, to add some human flavour, while ending up as a moving target of Iranian forces, local police, the Taliban, the ISI and various Afghan commandos. His head is on a platter to the highest bidder and in the Middle East there are no end of Kalashnikov-wielding opportunists. But this is Gerard Butler we’re talking about, although the odds are really stacked against him…
Since Homeland was terminated in 2020, no end of mid-level international action-thrillers tackling jihadism have sprung up on streaming platforms, each one attempting to top the other with the most spectacular drone shots of foreign lands. The opening shot of Ric Roman Waugh’s Kandahar is as awe-inspiring as they get and there is a strong flavour of Lawrence of Arabia here, with caravans of tanks and Humvees replacing the odd belligerent dromedary. The look is not the issue – the film looks great – it is the feeling of cliché crowding in on the narrative that is problematic. Gerard Butler plays Tom Harris, as B-movie a name as any screenwriter would dare submit (but then he could’ve been Scott McDonald, I suppose), which rather sets the tone. Like Denzel Washington’s Robert McCall in The Equalizer films, Tom Harris is a former DIA operative and has been deployed both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But this is his last job, which he takes to finance his daughter’s further education. More the fool him.
Plucking much of his material from the headlines (there’s children with detonators and a kidnapped British journalist), first-time scenarist Mitchell LaFortune knows of what he writes. The satellite surveillance and phone tapping of the CIA feels sickeningly authentic, as do the various hypocritical factions on the ground, praising Allah in the name of decapitation and child rape. This is disturbing stuff but is executed with such a formulaic flourish that it’s hard to break a sweat in its honour. While on the run, Tom Harris takes an Afghan translator (Navid Negahban) under his wing, although their rapport is perfunctory at best. Similar terrain was explored with considerably more texture in Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant which, coincidentally, is also available on Amazon Prime.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal, Bahador Foladi, Travis Fimmel, Nina Toussaint-White, Vassilis Koukalani, Mark Arnold, Corey Johnson, Ravi Aujla, Ray Haratian, Tom Rhys Harries, Rebecca Calder, Hakeem Jomah, Najia Khaan, Elnaaz Norouzi.
Dir Ric Roman Waugh, Pro Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee, Brandon Boyea, Gerard Butler, Alan Siegel, Christian Mercuri, Scott LaStaiti and Ali Jaafar, Screenplay Mitchell LaFortune, Ph MacGregor, Pro Des Vincent Reynaud, Ed Colby Parker Jr, Music David Buckley, Costumes Kimberly Adams-Galligan.
Thunder Road Films/G-BASE/MBC Studios/Capstone Global-Amazon Prime.
119 mins. USA/Saudi Arabia. 2023. US Rel: 26 May 2023. UK Rel: 4 August 2023. Cert. 15.
