TL;DR – It is a solid action film that is, unfortunately, not really sure what it wants to say.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this film.

Kandahar Review –

Some artists get known for periods in their career. Picasso had his Blue Period,  Monet had his Water Lilies, and James Cameron has his Avatar saga. But one new era that I have been particularly interested in is Gerard Butler’s one-word action films. So far, we have gotten Geostorm, Greenland, and Plane. Today, we look at the next entry with a spy mission that goes very wrong.   

So to set the scene, we open in Qom, Iran, where a team works on a telecommunications substation under heavy armed guard. But this is a secret CIA project led by Tom Harris (Gerard Butler) to monitor and disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. However, this gets leaked to a journalist, Luna Cujai (Nina Toussaint-White), from someone in the Pentagon. Tom is stuck in Herat, Afghanistan when the news is released. In Herat, the Taliban have taken over, and foreign spies from Pakistan, Iran, India, China, Pakistan, ISIS, and more roam the streets. There are no good options, but he needs to escape before he is publicly executed, and the only escape is MI6 black Ops pick up in Kandahar that will be on the ground for one minute in 30 hours.   

Putting aside for a moment that the CIA very much commits a war crime at the start of the film by detonating a nuclear reactor next to a civilian population [yes, they try to hand wave away the radiation, but no one is buying that]. The scenario they present is an interesting one. Repositioning a post-resurgent Taliban-run Afghanistan as a Cold War-style Berlin without the subtlety is an interesting scenario to set a film. Add to this a desire for a public execution, meaning people are not looking to kill outright and competing forces creating chaos. Well, you have all the groundwork for you there.

The action scenes are quite solid, using good build-up and tension before everything starts blowing up. The opening moments in the market as multiple different teams converge on Tom and Mo (Navid Negahban) was the kick the film needed. I also liked the fight between the guys and an Iranian helicopter oscillating between the dark night and the weird clarity of night-vision goggles. It creates a weird juxtaposition that works for the film. You add a ticking countdown to these action moments, making sure everyone has a family, positioning an emo-bikie as the big bad, and what you get is a compelling drive forward.

From a production perspective, the film looks stunning. We weave through so many different types of desert locations full of beauty. I liked that they depicted cities in the Middle East as actually being cities rather than dust-filled hamlets. The towns feel like lived in towns, the camps felt like camps, and this all helps. This is all supported by solid drone photography that boosts the action scenes. I respected using more practical explosions in places or at least excellent digital depictions. I will say that the musical score felt a bit lacklustre, and while it is not Army of the Dead bad, having someone sing about the desert while in the desert led to an eye roll. Laos, structurally, the first act was all over the place and could have been easily condensed.   

Where the film does not work is in its muddled messaging. Kandahar is exploring many topics: America’s role in the Middle East, CIA black ops, Iranian nuclear ambitions, abandoned translators, journalistic integrity, Pakistani medalling, modern warfare, and multiple layers of foreign policy decisions. Don’t get me wrong, these are important topics to explore, but Kandahar only dabbles in them, and you need more than that when working in this space. The film becomes a tourist in an area where it needs to be an expert.

In the end, do we recommend Kandahar? Well, it was a solid action film, and on that front, it works. However, it is also clearly trying to do something more than that, and somewhere during production, that drive fell apart, and you can feel that throughout the final product. If you liked Kandahar, we would recommend to you The Covenant.  

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you watched Kandahar?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Kandahar
Directed by – Ric Roman Waugh
Written by – Mitchell LaFortune
Music by – David Buckley
Cinematography by – MacGregor
Edited by – Colby Parker Jr.
Production/Distribution Companies – Thunder Road Films, G-BASE, MBC Studios, Capstone Global, Open Road Films & Amazon Prime
Starring – Gerard Butler, Ali Fazal, Navid Negahban, Bahador Foladi, Nina Toussaint-White, Vassilis Koukalani, Mark Arnold, Tom Rhys Harries, Corey Johnson, Travis Fimmel, Ravi Aujla, Ray Haratian, Olivia-Mai Barrett, Rebecca Calder, Faizan Munawar Varya & Elnaaz Norouzi
Rating – Australia: MA15+;