Proudly and narrowly, “12 Strong” is a good-news war story, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by first-time feature director Nicolai Fuglsig, of Denmark. He trained as a photojournalist, and covered the war in Kosovo; in the last decade Fuglsig’s commercial resume includes sleek, digitally savvy and action-oriented spots for Corvette and Xbox Halo 4, among other clients.
“12 Strong” is a good-news story, in that the facts and personnel constitute an early victory over the Taliban — not a comprehensive or lasting one, but a victory nonetheless. In the weeks following the destruction of the World Trade Center, as part of the Bush administration’s Operation Enduring Freedom, a 12-man U.S. Army Special Forces task force, code-named Task Force Dagger, was flown and then dropped into northern Afghanistan.
The mission was simple, the process, complicated. The Green Berets were charged with joining and advising Northern Alliance tribal warlords and their troops, fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida. The strategic early battle involved control of the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. With U.S. Air Force bombing support, and American soldiers traversing some extremely treacherous mountain terrain on horseback en route, the results were decisive. Also, the optics were terrific. The movie includes the moment when then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held up the picture of the “horse soldiers” (this was in late 2001) and found them very useful in selling the early stages of the war in Afghanistan.
In 2009, producer Bruckheimer got ahold of the galleys of Doug Stanton’s nonfiction account “Horse Soldiers.” It took a while, but “12 Strong” has come to fruition, with New Mexico locales doubling for Afghan and Uzbek locations. The movie was made on a medium-range budget (in other words, it isn’t “Black Hawk Down,” in any respect). “12 Strong” follows the production blueprint established by the gripping 2013 film “Lone Survivor,” which depicted a no-win 2005 Navy SEAL operation against the Taliban.
The stalwart cast is led by Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth. He plays the group’s captain, here named Mitch Nelson (based loosely on the real-life Mark Nutsch). Michael Shannon, in a shrewdly modulated turn, plays Chief Warrant Officer Hal Spencer, based on Bob Pennington. Trevante Rhodes, Michael Pena, William Fichtner and Rob Riggle work their scenes to advantage, though screenwriters Ted Tally and Peter Craig often seem stranded in a no-man’s land between quasi-documentary reality and reassuring Hollywood cliche.
The key relationship here is between Nelson and Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance, played by Navid Negahban of “Homeland.” The former’s characterization is familiar, stripped of detail and, as written and depicted here, Our American Hero, period. Dostum, by contrast, is the most interesting element of “12 Strong,” which probably should’ve added up in its title to 13. Scenes that seem far-fetched, such as Dostum goading the Taliban forces by telephone moments before an air strike, actually happened. For the script’s purposes, however, Dostum is there to remind Nelson that he can be more than a soldier; if he fights from the heart, he will become the warrior this war needs to vanquish their common foe.
Much of the action, as shot by Fuglsig and cinematographer Rasmus Videbaek and edited by Lisa Lassek, favors clear, adrenaline-pumping action beats and rousing, against-all-odds triumphs. Throughout the film, we’re reminded of the peculiarity of fighting men on horseback going up against all manner of military hardware. It’s not a bad movie, as far as it goes. In terms of context, though, it goes virtually nowhere. Granted, “Lone Survivor” stayed similarly close to a specific mission, albeit one with a very different outcome. But that movie stuck with you, relaying a stronger, truer sense of desperation. “12 Strong” is a straight-up, unalloyed shot of movie patriotism for the Make America Great Again sector of the American movie audience.
As proven by, among others, “American Sniper,” that sector is huge. “12 Strong” producer Bruckheimer also financed “Black Hawk Down,” a film that made war feel and look viscerally exciting, even at its bloodiest, but never lost sight of the larger picture and the ultimate cost of armed conflict. While director Fuglsig trained as a photojournalist, his movie’s action style owes as much to gaming aesthetics as it does to the real world. That cheapens the real-life heroism. And the disinterest in what came afterward feels suspicious. Once the Bush administration thought Afghanistan was good to go, the fiasco in Iraq began. Recent, varying estimates put the Taliban’s influence or control of Afghan districts at anywhere from 14 to 45 percent of the country. Meantime, U.S. spending in Afghanistan is nearing the trillion-dollar mark; some experts put the figure over $2 trillion.
No war movie can tell more than one primary story and a few underneath that one. “12 Strong” sticks to the basics, without much interest in the differentiating specifics of the men involved, or anything on a geopolitical scale beyond the impulse these Special Forces veterans shared in the wake of 9/11. It seems to me a qualified, limited success.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @phillipstribune
