12 Strong (2018)

Film: 12 Strong (2018)
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pena, Navid Negahban, Trevante Rhodes
Director: Nicolai Fuglsig
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The strange thing about the recent massive success of The Avengers and its many, many offshoots is that it kind of has delivered an entire new wave of movie stars that occasionally make movies where they aren't sporting a giant cape or a big shield.  Chris Evans, Chadwick Boseman, Tom Holland, and of course Chris Hemsworth have become household names at this point, and as a result, other studios are going to see if that cache will translate into them being bankable or just bankable when they have a superhero franchise behind them.  The latest entry in this "are they a star?" questionnaire was 12 Strong, a movie that is a bit outside-the-realm of what I normally see in the theaters, but I was asked by a coworker to go and thanks to MoviePass I'm much more inclined to give a random movie a chance, so I went to see it.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is based on real-life events following the September 11th attacks that took place in the beginning days of the War in Afghanistan.  It follows Mitch Nelson (Hemsworth), an arm captain that is "out but they pulled him back in," and is put in charge of a mission to capture a critical city in northern Afghanistan.  The film follows him, as well as his group of men, as they march across Afghanistan by horseback.  As they go, it encounters many of the tropes you expect from a war movie (the "rah rah" angle, the strange camaraderie of men), as well as provide highlighted roles for up-and-coming young actors like Trevante Rhodes & Austin Stowell.

The movie itself is pretty blase, and never finds ways to escape its cliched roots.  It doesn't fall into the level of truly awful cinema (I still can't get over how bad 13 Hours was), but it doesn't reach the "interesting commentary level" to say like American Sniper and isn't as succinct as Lone Survivor, even though it's clearly a descendant of those pictures.  It's one of those movies that clearly needs to grow its supporting characters, but relies on them being two-dimensional rather than growing them, as only Hemsworth, Shannon & Negahban have fully-fleshed characters, and they interact too much with supporting actors for this to be acceptable.  Rhodes, in particular, is making the most of a completely underwritten role and is by far best-in-show of this set, but there's nothing for him to do, and the movie is so predictable (even for a true story), that it's hard to take it seriously as a piece of cinema and not just something for Republicans to claim "is a good movie" because of the bravery of the men involved, rather than because of the artistry on its own.

That being said, I genuinely like Hemsworth as a movie star, and have yet to see a film where his naturalism in front of the camera isn't apparent.  Comedy is his forte, but he has a great energy as a movie star, sexy as hell but also with a gravitas (possibly brought about his resonant basso profundo).  I would like to see him tackle a role with a bit more thespian heft than this to see if he's more an 80's-era Mel Gibson (a Grade-A movie star but a middling actual actor), but there's something there.  I also wish that Michael Shannon would stop accepting every script that goes in front of him, because his angry, aging man has gotten into Samuel L. Jackson territory at this point with his constant films.  But all-in-all, Hemsworth (and Rhodes) save what could have been a truly mind-numbingly dull two hours and make it passable.