“12 Strong” is the definition of a bland military movie, falling into nearly every trope in the genre. The film is based on the true story of the horse soldiers, twelve US soldiers who were deployed in Afghanistan to take out Taliban targets following the September 11th attacks. While the true story it is based on is interesting, director Nicolai Fuglsig was unable to translate it to the big screen.

The strongest aspect of “12 Strong” was the chemistry between the actors. No one puts on an Oscar winning performance, but Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Peña all make for a believable group of soldiers. At times their acting can be a little stiff, but for the most part their banter and exchanges feel realistic.

At best, the rest of the movie is just mediocre. The score tries to make the action scenes feel epic, or the pep talks inspiring, but it just feels unearned and falls flat.

There’s nothing visually interesting about “12 Strong” either. The brown deserts of Afghanistan don’t really allow for much variation in scenery or color, but it doesn’t seem like anything more than the bare minimum effort was put in to filming. Not every war movie has to be the next “Apocalypse Now” or “Full Metal Jacket.” However, it would have been nice if there was at least some artistic merit to it.

For a military action movie, the combat scenes were not engaging at all. Nearly every scene began with a drawn out bombing sequence, which provided nothing besides a gore fest of dismembered limbs being strewn about, and completely bored the viewer before any gun could be fired.

The special effects were serviceable in the first and second act, and completely pathetic in the third. What would have been a real explosion in act two, was replaced with an iMovie-quality explosion effect in act three. There were multiple shots of Al-Qaeda members “firing” their guns, with no muzzle flare or sound effect, leaving us looking at background actors violently flailing their guns around to mimic recoil.

At times, “12 Strong” was flat out emotionally manipulative. One scene features a small exchange between a child soldier and one of the American soldiers, only to show the child die less than a minute later. When the soldiers finally complete their mission, the film ends in the most tone deaf way, as if their relatively minor victory meant the war on terror was over.

Besides the interactions between characters, very little of “12 Strong” made it worth the watch. Weak direction and bad special effects make what would be an otherwise interesting story into a bland, beat-by-beat military movie.

4/10

Pros:

– The actors portray a realistic team of soldiers

Cons:

– The action is not engaging at all

– Zero artistic merit to the film