KANDAHAR has the virtue of being more than a quotidian action tale of espionage and its attendant machinations. By taking a brooding rather than kinetic approach, it becomes a bittersweet meditation on, as one character sums up very neatly, the idea that modern wars are not meant to be won. The implications of that provide a compelling subtext as Gerard Butler, a Black Ops agent on the run with his interpreter (Navid Negahban), attempt to escape from all sides after an operation in Iran goes right, but the aftermath of which goes very, very wrong.
Butler is Tom Harris, who has successfully blown up an underground nuclear facility near Qom using subterfuge, hi-tech, and sheer chutzpah. Relieved that he is now free to return home in time for his daughter’s high-school graduation, he is considering various gifts for her at the Dubai International airport gift shop when he’s sidetracked by a new job, to which he has trouble saying no. And doesn’t. Another nuclear installation has to be taken out, and only Tom can do it.
In order to complete the mission, Tom will require an interpreter who knows both Pashtu and Dari, as well as being familiar with the local customs where the journalist is being held. Enter Mohammed, or Mo, as Tom will come to call him. An Afghan refugee, he re-enters the country courtesy of Tom’s fixer, Roman (Travis Fimmel), another Black Ops agent with connections that are equal parts shadowy and surprising. Mo has signed on to the mission that has him leaving behind his comfortable exile in America, but for reasons of his own that he hasn’t shared with the fixer. Negahban delivers a touching, enigmatic performance unsullied by artifice as an ordinary man knowingly taking on incredible danger. Butler, in the less interesting role, is hobbled by the cliché of being torn between Tom’s unshakeable sense of duty and the family that said commitment had cost him. Without overstating it, Butler gives us a man of deep feeling and loyalties that Tom can’t reconcile, a failure that is eating him alive. Without these performances, the prickly relationship between the two strangers forced to rely on each other would fall flat, taking most of the film with it, larger geopolitical issues raised notwithstanding.
Those issues are set forth in all their complexity, using supporting characters that are just as complex. Roman, the American agent who counsels Tom about finding peace by converting, as he has, to Islam. The Iranian agent (Bahador Foladi) ruthlessly tracking Tom and Mo who epitomizes the greater theme of realpolitik versus idealism across a spectrum of players that range from fanatical religious terrorists and amoral warlords, and the most intriguing character of the piece, Kahil (Ali Fazal), a Pakistani agent who moves freely among them all, if not always peacefully. He lectures fanatics in their stronghold about lowering their kill count while scheduling a hook-up on his phone app; makes situationally ethical deals with ethically barren players in order to be the first to capture Tom and Mo; and gently suggests to a young boy brainwashed by fanatics to blow up infidels that he should read the Koran for himself in order to find out the truth of what is written there. Fazal is cool personified, so much so that the trope of having him traverse the desert on a motorcycle clad in black leather rather than a more sensible white is forgivable, even if the white would be more cooling, the black is undeniably cooler.
There are flaws to be sure here, the most glaring being the short shrift given to a British journalist (Nina Toussaint-White) who leaked classified information from her Pentagon source only to be kidnapped by the Iranians wanting more intel. It’s a salient plot point used to establish the torn humanity of one of her captors, but goes nowhere else. Then there is the universal problem in stories such as this of enemy fire never quite being able to hit its mark. Still, the requisite plot twists, confrontations/reckonings, and red herrings are suitably engrossing aided by precise and thoughtful direction by Ric Roman Waugh. The de riguer chase scene through a city’s streets relies less on suspension of disbelief than is usual in the genre giving it a different, and welcome, sort of urgency. He also takes excellent advantage of the sweeping landscapes of the Saudi Arabian desert where it was filmed, including its billowing airborne sand that features prominently at one critical juncture.
KANDAHAR is most commendable for eschewing the monolithic approach to portraying the “other”, and by doing so offers welcome insight that is never didactic, never contrived. There is much to be admired for bringing things down to such a human scale in order to illuminate the larger picture.
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