A Little More Development Could Have Made This Movie 12 Stronger

Rating: 8/10 (21 January 2018)

My Scores:
Action/Drama/History: 7.5
Movie Overall: 6.5
LIKES:
-Pace
-Dialogue
-Messages
-Action
DISLIKES:
-Too Long
-Hard to Differentiate Characters
-Army Of One
With the new year starting, 12 strong opens the gate for action movies this January. Fans of military dramas will be entertained by the fast pace of the film, outside the first hour, once the bombs and guns begin to roar. Interspersed between the battles, is a rich dialogue that is broken into categories that represent: natural conversation between teammates, military jargon to get you caught up in the action, and more importantly an honorable exchange of words that represent cultures well. The messages in this movie are charge up with the special effects of Hollywood, and with it a great presentation of the cultural dynamics in war. And of course, there is plenty of action to keep things intense and exciting, laden with all the war time theatrics that portray the American Hero we all love to see.
Sadly, 12 Strong suffers from too little editing and trying to get everything into one movie. Much of the length comes from trying to cover every detail of the war, including such small gimmicks as an air drop gone wrong. These moments are immersive, but add little to the movie that couldn't be read in a book. Any details of the soldiers' lives are rushed over, feeling incomplete and irrelevant to the story, a shame given that these components could have helped each member of the team stand out. Unfortunately, the cast of this movie look very similar, with only a few visual features to help them stand out from each other. Chris Hemsworth is the man who gets most of the attention, with the studio relying quite heavily on him in both character development and action fields. The other members got their pitches in, but they weren't as strong as the captain of the group.
While not the best war movie to grace the silver screen, it still has plenty of theater worthy qualities that make this worth a visit. It's an exciting, special effects spectacle complete with cultural prowess and band of brotherhood moments that you like to see in these movies. And while it paints the pictures of heroes, the movie needed some more fine tuning to really get all 12 heroes the portrayal they deserved. A little more development and a little less time at the opening may have further strengthened this movie, but ha good shot nonetheless.