A battle worth fighting

A battle worth fighting

12 Strong is the story of an important military campaign, poorly told

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Towards the end of 12 Strong -- the new Jerry Bruckheimer-produced war movie that hit Thai theatres this week -- there is a scene featuring protagonist Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth), in full US army war-gear, leading a charging column of Afghan freedom-fighters on horseback into a Taliban gunline, complete with tanks and missile-launchers. In true Hollywood super-soldier fashion, the captain picks off jihadists left and right while holding his assault rifle one-handed, sprinting his horse headfirst into a flurry of scything machine-gun rounds. He comes out the other side unscathed of course, thanks to his prodigious plot armour, and proceeds to save the day as scores of freedom fighters are cut down all around him.

The above paragraph is basically 12 Strong in a nutshell. Based on the book Horse Soldiers, about a real-life special-forces operation following the events of 9/11, the film is an almost comical glorification of America and its army, painting them as gallant saviours of the lesser peoples, bringing the most destructive weaponry in the history of civilisation to the unwashed, horse-riding renegades of the Northern Alliance. And when the missiles fail? The special-forces soldiers -- many of whom have never ridden horses in their entire lives -- were ready to show the Afghans how its done, fighting on horseback with a proficiency that would make Genghis Khan's famous Mongols blush.

As previously mentioned, Chris Hemsworth plays the stereotypical true-blue American hero: white, blonde, blue-eyed, macho to a fault, never lacking in cool one-liners and courage, displaying almost suicidal acts of heroism. It's almost too easy to forget that his character doesn't actually have any real combat experience to speak of prior to the mission, as the film mentions on multiple occasions. Meanwhile, the Afghan leader General Dostum (Navid Negahban) is portrayed as a stubborn, eccentric warlord, speaking in muddled riddles and preoccupied with trivial feuds with other warlords, only to be chastised and shown the correct way of things by the Americans.

To be fair, the real-life soldiers who embarked on the mission did really complete the mission with no casualties, and the outgunned Afghan freedom fighters really did fight the Taliban from horseback. But the sheer level of absurd heroism displayed by the US soldiers in the film makes it really tough to take 12 Strong seriously.

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