Guy Ritchie's previous film was released only a month prior to this one. It is tonally different, if not tone-wise completely opposite than his previous. It's perhaps tonally different from every other film he's ever done. Ritchie typically does action comedies or crime dramas. He diverged from those types of films with Swept Away (2002), which was a Rom-com, as well as with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) and Aladdin (2019), which were more fantasy flicks. I didn't appreciate those divergences, but I did appreciate this one. In fact, this one currently stands as my favorite in his oeuvre.
Jake Gyllenhaal (Spider-Man: Far From Home and Brokeback Mountain) stars as John Kinley, a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Army. He's currently serving in Afghanistan in 2018. He leads a unit that's responsible for finding weapons or weapon makers. American soldiers and others keep getting killed by IED, so John and his men are trying to search for the Taliban operatives behind them. He's a straight shooter, but he's a super macho guy that trades barbs with the other soldiers, invoking a sardonic wit and charm.
Dar Salim (A War and The Devil's Double) co-stars as Ahmed Abdullah, a Muslim mechanic living in Afghanistan. He's married with a baby on the way. He's been existing in this war ravaged country for decades now. Despite the odds against him, he decides to oppose the Taliban by working as an interpreter for the United States. He's assigned to John's unit and helps in the weapons search. There's obviously some trust issues between him and the Americans, so it seems as if Ahmed is constantly having to prove himself.
A large chunk of this film, if not the majority, is Ahmed having to prove himself. The performances are on the level of The Hurt Locker (2009), but the action is akin to Lone Survivor (2013) where one has the heroes behind enemy lines, attempting to escape and make it to the other side for safety, away from swarms of bad guys. Ritchie handles it, along with the action, with quiet muscularity and with fewer bombast than what Ritchie is perhaps accustomed.
The cinematic trick that Ritchie prefers here is the wordless montage. The centerpiece is the journey that Ahmed undertakes. It conveys a long and arduous task. Ritchie tries to show the work that men like Ahmed had to undergo in order to aide or rescue American soldiers. Ritchie really wants to underscore and reinforce the sacrifice those Muslim men made and how much danger they faced. At the same time, Ritchie establishes the debt that America owes to men like Ahmed and absolutely sells it with the help of Gyllenhaal's dead-serious performance.
In 2021, the U.S. ended its presence in Afghanistan, concluding what had become a twenty-year conflict. This resulted in the Taliban taking control of the country. Many Afghans had to be evacuated, including those who worked with America, men like Ahmed. The problem is that the U.S. didn't evacuate all the Muslim men who helped America. It left a lot of people behind. This film might be as fictional as Extraction (2020), but, it gets at a fundamental truth about international commitments and promises to those who risk their lives for Americans, promises not to leave them behind.
Rated R for language, violence and brief drug use.
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 3 mins.
In theaters.
