‘KANDAHAR’ Review: Gerard Butler’s Plodding Actioner Kand Not Get The Job Done

Courtney Howard // Film Critic

KANDAHAR

Rated R, 1 hour and 59 minutes

Directed by: Ric Roman Waugh

Starring: Gerard Butler, Navid Negahban, Travis Fimmel, Ali Fazal, Bahador Foladi, Nina Toussaint-White

Not all movie marriages between director and star can be as creatively bountiful as Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson, or, throwing it back even further, John Ford and John Wayne. Though director Ric Roman Waugh and his gritty action muse Gerard Butler’s second cinematic outing together, GREENLAND, gave audiences an on-point, visceral doomsday thrill-ride, their third feature KANDAHAR regresses to the banal qualities and poor filmmaking techniques of their first film, ANGEL HAS FALLEN. Centered on a man struggling with his dedication to his adrenaline-fueled job, this desert dry actioner is filled with lazy, laughable clichés and poorly orchestrated spectacle.

Tom Harris (Butler, who sleepwalks through this role) is an undercover CIA operative in the Middle East whose efforts to tap into Iran’s surveillance resulted in a successful mission to blow up their nuclear plant. He’s all set to return home to finalize a divorce from his estranged wife and attend his daughter’s graduation when his handler Roman (Travis Fimmel) calls him in for one last job which requires him to have a translator, Mohammed (Navid Negahban, whose performance is a true highlight). It’s around this time a whistleblower comes forth leaking classified information on the plant and the government’s involvement to British journalist Luna (Nina Toussaint-White), whose reporting throws Tom’s life into jeopardy. Tom and Mohammed are ordered to get to an airstrip 400 miles away in Kandahar, traveling through hostile territory, before those looking to kill the pair – like Iranian Colonel Fazard Asadi (Bahador Foladi) and foreign spy Kahil Nazir (Ali Fazal) – catch them.

For a premise that sounds direct and clean-lined, Mitchell LaFortune’s screenplay is padded and convoluted. He crowds the film with too many characters and their unnecessary storylines, trying to draw connections between everyone’s arcs to make a heavy-handed statement on the futility of this raging fight. Humanizing the villains by showing their extracurricular activities (like Nazir’s womanizing and Fazard’s home life with his wife, who primarily exists to lay guilt trips on him) only adds to the plodding run time and takes away from the unrelenting nature of Tom’s journey. The attempt to give Mohammed an arc is maddening as his character’s resolution has no genuine sense of closure. His inclusion is there to blunt any jingoistic complaints from a discerning, enlightened audience. Ironically, however, it only adds to them. Same goes for the lackluster effort to make the pair of antagonists into more than one-dimensional bad guys.

Waugh, who has clearly never met a practical explosion he doesn’t like, litters his film with them. So much so, they all begin to look the same once Tom and Mohammed flee the street market on their way through the desolate desert to their target. There are elongated stretches of this film that take place in the dark of night. Since the pair are scuttling across the abandoned terrain without attracting attention, using the cloak of night to their advantage, there’s little to no light source, so much of the actors’ work is indistinguishable. The attack set piece barely blends any night vision and dark room lighting into the edit. It’s completely incoherent as to who is shooting at whom and what is happening for that 8 minute stretch. Whatever the stunt design team created is wasted simply because we spectators can’t see what they did.

To say KANDAHAR is frustrating would be an understatement. By the time we make it to the final act, there’s nothing left to care about here – even the goofiest of deus ex machinas doesn’t help. It’s bad, full stop.

Grade: 1 out of 5

KANDAHAR will be in theaters on May 26.