Jingoistic but a robust action drama

Rating: 6/10 (8 July 2018)

Oguz from Istanbul finds himself in deeper territory this time in the sequel to The Mountain. He's one of two soldiers who sign up for the Turkish special forces and after 5 years of training their first mission is rescuing a journalist from ISIS in Iraq. There are some great locations and beautiful landscapes.. It is overly sentimental and Turkish nationalism lies prominent but the combat scenes are very convincing. The ending is similar to Saving Private Ryan but it's thrilling enough for the viewer to not care. It's an interesting edition to the genre of war action given the tendency of American war cinema to portray U.S. special forces as the most elite, along with some others portraying British SAS and Israeli IDF too. Also interesting is the tone, whilst being nationalistic it has a message about justification for a Greater Turkey and a sense for the need to defend Turkish people living across arbitrarily drawn borders. Overall, a solid movie with some good acting and good action in the villages under heavy attack from ISIS.