Review: 12 Strong

12 Strong (2018) - Nicolai Fuglsig

        Growing up, war movies were kind of a rite of passage, especially in America. It's a weird kind of way to bond with your fellow countrymen over your shared nationalism. And it used to be a lot simpler: The Nazis were terrible (which is true and is still true) and America had to finally get involved to save the world from their fascist regime. You could be a ten-year-old happily sitting next to pop on the couch, watching our hometown boys getting brutally killed but still taking out those bastard krauts and feel excited, proud even. Then you get a little older and you realize that maybe those shady Asians hiding int he trees in the Vietnam movies weren't actually completely the bad guys? I mean, no no, don't get me wrong, they're still the bad guys because America is definitely the good guys, but...maybe they're not all terrible? Then you get older and start watching more movies about newer, more complicated wars (Gulf War, and now Iraq/Afghanistan) and you (hopefully, dear god hopefully) start to question some of the rhetoric you're being fed. Why are we in the Middle East exactly? Wait, why did that helicopter in Mogadishu get shot down in the first place? And of course, more and more movies these days are treating these wars with a more skeptical eye, but there's still such an overriding sense of jingoistic (I love this word and will be using it at least two more times in this review) Americanism to them, because we can never disparage the troops, even though disparaging the troops and disparaging the government interests that put the troops in these places are very different things that the average movie-going public has not been able to ascertain.
       Without getting too political (I am absolutely going to get too political), this is obviously more sensitive now with our current, horrifyingly racist government. So my question is, do we really need more movies about how terrible the rest of the world is and how great America is? Yes, people who use violence as a political measure are terrible, but shouldn't we at least try to understand what their point of view is? Aren't there better ways to show our country as strong and righteous than dropping soldiers in a foreign land to show them killing hundreds, possibly thousands of people there? Basically this is just a long-winded way to say that while 12 Strong wasn't nearly as awful as I thought it was going to be, I really don't think we need more post 9/11, thinly-veiled anti-Muslim rhetoric in our movie theatres. Actually, maybe we don't need war movies at all anymore.

       12 Strong starts on the morning of 9/11, and doesn't waste a lot of time getting right into the main conceit: The Taliban attacked America, so now a small team of 12 soldiers are going in to try and take out a specific terrorist cell in Afghanistan. And they have horses. It's filled with American symbolism, flags everywhere, loving families with dutiful goodbyes, because everyone knows for sure that Democracy is at risk. Part of me wishes I could watch this movie divorced from my own political beliefs, but the movie so specifically posits you in the middle of this world where Americans have to be Amazing and the Afghanis, even the ones on our "side," are backwards and crude and so clearly below us. I don't want to sound like some crazy Liberal screaming on the street, but I can't help but get lost in the whole "this war was fought for oil" kind of mindset, and the movie's politics automatically make me feel uncomfortable, like I'm being somehow un-American for not wanting innocent bystanders in Middle Eastern countries to not killed so that our soldier boys can KICK SOME ASS.

        So, trying to put aside the questionable morals that are lurking behind every scene and narrative arc of the movie 12 Strong, how is it? It's...fine. It's not very good, but it's not awful. It has all the same cliche war bullshit we've been seeing in movies since the dawn of war movies: Soldiers befriending native children so that the kid can die in the next scene so our soldiers can learn a lesson, someone telling someone something can't be done only for the original person who was told the thing they wanted to do couldn't be done actually does the thing, and basically every other general "We're white and that means we're here to save you" trope that can be mustered. However, I will acquiesce that the movie has a decently snappy pace and it's competently shot. The battle scenes have an urgency to them and at least keep your attention. It's only when you spend more than about seven or eight seconds really thinking about it that it starts to have a funky smell and leave a bad taste in your mouth.
       There are some actors in the movie, sure. But there's really not all that much required of any of them, even though some of them are pretty great actors. Michael Shannon is probably the best actor working today but they were still able to saddle him with a character who literally says, "Did we get 'em?" as he's rushed out of battle to an emergency chopper. Did we get 'em? You're not playing pranks on the other frat house, you are literally ending thousands of lives. Michael Pena and Thor are there too to be American, heroic, tough, smart, motivated, strong, and everything else that makes the US Military so goddamn fantastic.

       This movie just didn't sit right with me. It didn't feel great when I watched the previews, while it was on I felt like it was a simplistic and pretty blunt way to tell a story of American heroism, especially in 2018 when a lot of people in this country are taking the notion of being proud of your country to dangerous, nationalistic, and downright fascist levels. Yes, 9/11 was an absolute fucking tragedy and the men and women who risked their lives after deserve our respect. But showing them running around on horses killing people in their own country basically because we're America and WE CAN is just not the kind of storytelling we need today. Besides, we've seen that story in every single American-made war movie ever told (unless maybe Terrence Malick was directing it cuz that dude is straight cray). Maybe it's time we, I don't know, actually try and see how some of it worked from the point of view of the people that were helping us? Ya know, the Muslim characters? Who also risked their lives and had to endure decades of American intervention whenever it met our capitalist goals?

        Sorry, like I said, it's pretty hard to not bring politics into this one.

Grade: 2 Out of 5 Beautiful, Billowing, American Flags.