Kandahar (2023)
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
Written by Mitchell LaFortune
Starring Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban
Release Date May 26th, 2023
Published May 24th, 2023
Is Kandahar a good movie actually? I am not sure. As a film critic, I've seen so many terrible movies starring Gerard Butler and many awful, racist, terrible movies set in the middle east. I am kind of numb to both Butler and the tropes of middle east set thrillers. And yet, I don't feel like I hated Kandahar. The film moves as a terrific pace, the action makes sense, the stereotypes are tempered by a relative even-handedness that criticizes American meddling in the middle east and the necessity American intelligence has to monitor the potential for uprisings that could threaten not just middle eastern security, but world security.
You can argue in the comments about your opinions of American intervention in the middle east, the politics, the greed involved, the corporate interests and so on. The bottom line is, Kandahar seems to give a fair perspective on the matter while telling a compelling story of survival via the tropes of an action movie. The movie pivots on an American mission in Iran that destroys a massive part of Iranian infrastructure related to the Iranian nuclear program. Intelligence regarding who was behind the mission is leaked to other middle eastern countries and it places the CIA Agent at the heart of the mission in great peril.
Gerard Butler stars in Kandahar as Tom Harris. Having posed as a phone company operative, he's actually used access to Iranian infrastructure to plant a bomb. In a tense scene, he narrowly misses blowing his cover through a clever bit of misdirection involving his phone, faster internet, and soccer. This set piece sets a tense tone that will rarely let up throughout the rest of Kandahar. Having narrowly escaped with his life, Tom looks to be headed home where his wife is waiting with divorce papers. He does have a welcome home from his young daughter waiting for him but when a fellow middle eastern operative, played by Travis Fimmel, offers him a mission that could pay for his daughter's college, he delays the trip home.
This is a fateful choice. Just as soon as Harris is on the ground in Kandahar, investigating the disappearance of several female teachers taken hostage by rogue Taliban forces, Harris' cover is blown worldwide. A leak of documents has exposed CIA operations across the middle east, including, and especially, Tom's mission in Iran. Now, Tom, along with his interpreter, played by Navid Negahban, are being hunted by several opposing middle eastern interests, each with their own motivation for wanting to capture and kill the American spy and his interpreter.
The key thing that I was moved by in Kandahar was the relationship that builds slowly between Butler and Negahban. There are elements here that we've seen before but Negahban is a very compelling actor whose presence seems to smooth out some of Butler's meathead tendencies. He's still mostly just a killing machine, but the story brings a bit of unforced nuance to Butler's motivations and his growing connection to Negahban is a strong root for the survival story. Director Ric Roman Waugh, whose work I have never cared for before, smartly builds a couple of dramatic set pieces that genuinely got my pulse racing.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media.
