12 Strong

This movie was fantastic. Every bit as good as the trailers make it out to be. A sight above Zero Dark Thirty, and on par with American Sniper. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the best movie I see all year.

It’s really fascinating to see how combat forges bonds between people. At the beginning, right after ODA 595 gets dropped in Afghanistan, there’s a real sense of tension as they don’t know who they can trust. That clears up after a few good battles, and by the end, it’s totally gone.

There’s also a really euphoric sense of victory that can be hard to find in Hollywood war movies. It’s easy to find movies that say “war is horrible,” and this one certainly says that as well, but it can be difficult to find a movie that portrays American forces as righteous leaders and unambiguous heroes. This one certainly does, without hamming it up or going over the top in any way, because these men really are heroes.

And the scale of the victory… I mean, Saving Private Ryan was a great movie, but the victory was less about the war and more about saving a single man. Zero Dark Thirty was about killing Osama Bin Laden, but there wasn’t a whole lot of actual combat. Hacksaw Ridge was a tremendous story about the heroism of one man, but the scope was still limited to the island of Okinawa.

In contrast, the scope of 12 Strong was the entire Taliban, and the War of Afghanistan itself. To this day, the victory marks Al Qaeda’s greatest defeat. Besides all that, there’s something awesomely badass about leading an outnumbered cavalry charge against tanks, rockets, RPGs, and truck monted machine guns, and winning.

Awesome movie. Though I have to say, I think there’s a bug on Rotten Tomatoes, because they have the scores for 12 Strong and The Last Jedi switched. In any case, this is definitely a war movie worth seeing.