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Russia and Georgia’s five-day war resulted in numerous people losing their family members. Thus, there’s a montage at the end of this movie with broken families that are seen holding pictures of their collectivist loved ones. These images do nothing other than include more pain in an otherwise very shallow Michael Bay film idea. Sure, you’ll learn a lot about the war, but not from any of your useful perspectives. So my point is, their perspective is not wrong, however, it’s not the best way to advertise a cheap Georgian funded war thriller.
Journalists are in the heart of the screenplay. The movie starts with a statistic that suggests that out of the 500 reporters that had been murdered during the last decade, 11 have been killed while in combat. At the first glance, it does seem tragic, but when you dig deeper, it’s an absolute understatement. From the perspective of these reporters, the world is so much more gray than justified. Let’s take, for instance, Dutchman (Val Kilmer), a rather posh journalist who always seems to be on the move.
So it begins with a prologue with some action in Iraq where a reporter for cable, Thomas Anders (Rupert Friend) along with his cameraman, Sebastian Ganz (Richard Coyle), have gone on the field with Thomas’ girlfriend Miriam (Heather Graham) who gets killed during the conflict leading Thomas to go back home to LA. After this, Dutchman makes Thomas go “skype” him, telling him how excited he is for the things about to happen, saying, This place is about to blow! Yes Thomas, you’re right, and for almost the entire movie, he paces around with an open nose wound. It’s quite a guess why the filmmakers didn’t want to cover the amount of literal trauma Thomas goes through fearing that moviegoers would confuse Jack Nicholson’s appearance in Chinatown with his portrayal.
Now you may ask how do some of the actual Georgians come into the picture? What about on Easter? Well, the reporters get an invite to a wedding only for it to get shattered by the appearance of Russian helicopters. Thomas meets with a friend called Tatia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) who’s going to be his translator and they both witness the countless deaths and chaos during the wedding. After some of this action, Thomas and Sebastian try to get away with Tatia and some of her family, so they do the sensible thing and crouch while running behind fences trying to avoid getting shot while at the same time hoping to get a good view and witness some useful action scenes.
The action unfolds without any logical structure; people are shot at and bombs are set off. Explosions rock the air, and SUVs rotate mid-air. I recall seeing the same SUV over and over, and strategically, there is a consistent lack of strategy. We are instantly transported to the office of President Mikheil Saakhsvili, a character portrayed by Andy Garcia. Alas, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Saakhsvili. Additional scenes also include that of a cruel and sadistic Russian colonel, taking the role of Rade Serbedzija, who also commits what is known as the ‘Talking Killer Fallacy’.
Renny Harlin is often credited with the direction of the action-packed features ‘Cliffhanger’ and ‘Die Hard 2’ but never with any geopolitical deliberations. If the intention of the film was to instill sympathy towards the Georgians, we can assume that no viewers outside of Georgia would pay attention. There are countless tough guys sprinting around and detonating buildings and things, which raises the question as to why neither the Russian nor the Georgians gained intel on the fact that there are people stationed behind the fence that provides clear visibility.
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