Its real-life backstory having been recently and solemnly “declassified”, here is the hokummy movie version of an interesting chapter in the US war on terror – what appears to have been a very rare “mission accomplished” moment of high-morale success that occurred very soon after the horror of September 11, before the disillusion set in.
An elite 12-man Special Forces group went out to Afghanistan on a top-secret mission to liaise with indigenous anti-Taliban forces and capture the strategically vital town of Mazar-i-Sharif. They had to ride horses provided by locals, and this film amusingly shows the results as something like cowboys on a cavalry charge.
Chris Hemsworth plays team leader Mitch Nelson, stepping up to his first real command, and Navid Negahban (the al-Qaeda leader Abu Nazir in TV’s Homeland) plays his opposite number, the Afghan general Abdul Dostum, who is shown to be tricky, cynical, unreliable, but given to stirringly mystical homilies about warriors fighting with the heart. It’s all very easy: a feelgood war tale from what feels like a distant age.
