12 Strong - Thor vs the Taliban

When I watch a film like '12 Strong,' i.e. one that's 'based on true events,' I always feel like I should research the true story before deciding on how good the film is.  It tells the tale of the first group of American soldiers sent into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks who paved the way for the Allied invasion and subsequent regime change for the Middle Eastern country.  Naturally, it's all told from America's perspective, but with any Hollywood war movie, what did you expect?  Anyway, it's naturally very patriotic and, although I can't confirm or deny on how close to the actual story this depiction is, it's still pretty good fun.  And, dare I say that's mainly to do with its leading man, Chris 'Thor' Hemsworth.

Hemsworth plays 'Captain Mitch Nelson' - the squad leader of the twelve special forces operatives sent in to meet up with various local tribes, all of which only too willing to help overthrow the Taliban.  There are a couple of familiar faces thrown in there as well - the ones I recognised were Michael Shannon and William Fichtner, but, in my opinion, it's Hemsworth's show all the way.  It's hardly controversial to say that he can carry a franchise with ease and here is an example of how he can generally take what is probably a bit of a mediocre and predictable film into something very watchable.  He's just so damn easy to watch and somehow doesn't let his (annoyingly, in my bitter opinion!) good looks get in the way of him portraying a kind of 'everyman' soldier who you could just imagine leading a platoon of troops into battle.

As you can probably imagine, the film centres around Hemsworth and his men.  There is some attempt to show what's going on in the country at the time, but I did get the feeling that this was there for the added effect of showing how bad it was and therefore doubling down on justifying America's invasion of the region.  They try to show the 'villain' of the film (i.e. the leader of the Taliban in the area they're attacking) and what he's up to, but the fact that the story dictates the fact that he's obviously never going to interact with our heroes, he's about as effective as a villain as a bad guy in the Marvel Cinema Universe (excluding Loki, of course!).

Besides Hemsworth, I thought the other stand-out performance came from Navid Negahban as local warlord/American ally, 'General Dostum.' He actually gets enough screen time to show us that not all residents of the country are our enemies and its good to see the bond develop between him and Hemsworth's characters.  Naturally, there are also the obvious battles that you're going to get in any war film.  Most of them seem pretty well done and realistic, but I think there were a few CGI explosions thrown in there as well.  Like I say, I'm not sure how historically accurate this film is, but there is some text at the end (which I always go by!) that tells us a few facts and it does seem that the film-makers have done their best to tell the actual story, rather than just throwing out some US propaganda.  So, if you're interested in the early days of the 'War on Terror,' like war movies, or are just a fan of Chris Hemsworth, this is actually a film that's better than I expected it to be.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that