harrowing and terrifying

Rating: 10/10 (7 January 2017)

I am always a bit dubious about war/combat films as often they are heavily biased so I approached this film with some apprehension. The slow start didn't engage me straight away, but it became very clear that the whole tone of the film was very different from the usual. The film portrays men in combat without the need to include stereotypes; the characters were depicted in such a way that gave them depth and complexity and almost an ordinariness. There is very little political comment regarding the situation in Benghazi throughout the film, although there were some allusions to the men being abandoned by US military; however, this was done very subtly, as opposed to Oliver Stone in-yer-face, which was actually more effective. I'm not familiar with any of the actors other than Toby Stevens, but the quality of the performances all round was exceptional. The horror and loss were felt in equal measure, and the sense of having to persevere in the face of the odds being increasingly stacked up against them, built up over the course of the final showdown. I disagreed with some of the reviews that the film was too long, and feel the preamble was necessary to the whole plot; these men were intended to be bodyguards and ended up in the middle of a war-zone, so the soft start was entirely appropriate. This is a great film which appears to have been largely overlooked, and I hope it gets more recognition now it can be streamed.