Our macho action movie auteurs are starting to reckon with the tragic situation in Afghanistan, which has fallen to the Taliban after the withdrawal of the United States in 2021. On the heels of “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant” comes Ric Roman Waugh’s “Kandahar” starring Gerard Butler, a brutal actioner set in the lawless land of an Afghanistan crawling with Taliban, ISIS-K and various covert operatives.
But while Butler vehicles are typically lean, mean, action-cinema delivery machines, Waugh’s “Kandahar” is not the usually efficient Butlerian fare such as “Plane,” or even “Greenland,” the previous film on which this director and star collaborated. Yes, Butler does play a sad single dad on his way to his teen daughter’s graduation, much like he did in “Plane” (if he has a flight to catch, something crazy is about to go down), but “Kandahar” is much bigger and broader.
Screenwriter Mitchell LaFortune, a U.S. Army and Defense Intelligence Agency veteran, brings a sense of authenticity to this sprawling and complicated tale of contemporary spy fiction that attempts to encompass warring terrorist factions, fascist regimes, CIA black ops, Pentagon whistleblowers, kidnapped journalists, as well as reckon with the enduring trauma of the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
