B for effort - read the book!!!

Rating: 7/10 (9 August 2018)

The book and story upon which this Hollywood flock is based is awesome, and even important. The movie is a fairly standard Hollywood-version military exercise, and I can't fully fault the production team or actors because they have to tell a big story in 2 hours about a major event that should be well known to Americans and Afghans alike, let alone the rest of the world. Plus, no one behind the special effects or acting or script or direction were there. Much like Lone Survivor it's a pretty decent depiction of a true story for a film production, but also much like Lone Survivor, I wish it had taken the source material a tad more seriously, and attached much more telling and brutal realism (like Saving Private Ryan and The Hurt Locker) in terms of mood and dialog and acting, and even equipment and battle scenes. I don't want a Tears Of The Sun fairy tale with my war movies. I want something that transports us there. More realistic tactics, weapons that fire and report realistically, bombs that aren't full of fireballs all the time, etc... All could have been done here. But many would have lost interest in the drama... It's been dumbed down, and 90% of the audience will have no idea.
Maybe I demand too much, or am too picky, or just don't accept the "average" like "average" Americans who don't look any deeper at stuff like war other than action films and headlines. I feel like our veterans deserve better.
Meanwhile, the negative reviews here are by folks who really have no idea what they're talking about, especially when they call it "propaganda". Politics produce propaganda. This is a story based on actual accounts...as in: it happened. Doesn't matter what your politics are. Read the book Horse Soldiers. Talk to more vets. Talk to some Afghani people who know a bit about their own country and the Taliban.
This movie could have been WAY better, but it was sinply "good" as what we've come to expect from Hollywood most of the time. I think it was wasted on misguided and detached production values and sensationalism that can only be provided by limited knowledge and devotion. Had Spielberg made this flick? Might have been an all-time great. And I say MIGHT, because it would be almost impossible to bring the reality and education to the screen that the book was able to portray and provide, and the reality on the ground these men experienced. Why we settle for pop culture education on important matters and historical events as our ONLY education is beyond me. But it seems the American audience wouldn't know the difference if REALITY ran over them in the form of a stampede of horses with a team of US special forces and Afghan militia on their backs. So I guess there's no real hard done, right?