Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Writer: Mitchell LaFortune
Stars: Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal
Synopsis: A CIA operative and his translator flee from special forces in Afghanistan after exposing a covert mission.
I think it’s safe to say that Gerard Butler has been typecast in a slew of B-level action pictures and is on track to become the next Liam Neeson. He even reunites with director Ric Roman Waugh for Kandahar. Waugh directed Butler in Angel Has Fallen and the surprisingly fun Greenland. One who expects Butler to go through an impossible mission to get to his family (that has been the plot of every Butler action film for a while now) may enjoy Kandahar. However, those looking for serious entertainment may leave the theater feeling disappointed.
At least the action scenes are good. Waugh knows how to direct tight and exciting setpieces, ranging from a car chase inside a densely-packed market, a night vision battle between Tom Harris (Gerard Butler) and a helicopter, and a duel in the sand between Harris and ISI agent Kahlil (Ali Fazal). The latter is the coolest setpiece of the bunch, with Waugh and cinematographer MacGregor amping up the tension with long, wide shots, whilst editor Colby Parker Jr. cuts the confrontation with precision. The result is terrifically exciting and worth the price of admission for the big screen experience.
Unfortunately, it takes a long time to get going. The film spends a good forty minutes setting up its multiple storylines, of many enemies going after Harris and translator Mo (Navid Neghaban) trying to flee Afghanistan to get to Kandahar after their cover is blown. There are perhaps way too many characters that, unfortunately, do not do much other than act in a brooding evil look. Fazal’s Khalil is a one-note ISI agent with a cool motorcycle. That’s it. He does nothing else but travel on his motorcycle, travel in a truck that carries his motorcycle, and then prepares his motorcycle to travel with it once more. At least it looks cool as hell.
There’s a journalist character who gets kidnapped, which serves as a way for Waugh to insert a half-assed geopolitical commentary that goes absolutely nowhere, just like most of the film’s side characters. One character appears during a pivotal action scene, only for him to completely disappear during the rest of the film until he reappears at the end to reveal that he died. It’s as if the filmmakers forgot to show that he died in action. But since the side characters are so forgettable, maybe they thought no one would notice?
That said, Butler gives his all for the first time in a long time. He has phoned it in since starring in Olympus Has Fallen and hasn’t gotten any better with time. But in Kandahar, he seems to care about the bond between Harris and Mo genuinely, played with great emotional resonance by Negahban, who is one of the most underappreciated character actors working today (I’ll direct you to his work as The Shadow King in FX’s Legion). They’re why you slowly care about their quest because their performances are excellent. However, this exact story was done in a much better movie a month ago, with only a few differences: Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (it also doesn’t help that I watched that film last week, which left quite an impression on me).
In a sense, Kandahar is the Cannon Group version of Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. It’s got great action and two great lead performances. However, the difference in quality between the two is staggering, especially when it tries to shoehorn a geopolitical commentary that doesn’t work since Waugh doesn’t do anything with his journalistic subplot. There’s a lot he’s trying to balance out in this film — some of it works, but most of it doesn’t. As far as his collaborations go with Butler, it’s, unfortunately, his weakest, even if he manages to get a great performance out of him. Here’s hoping his next B-grade action film will be significantly better.
