Ambush

I lasted 10 minutes and 32 seconds. There were so many military inaccuracies the movie became irredeemable in the opening act. Scream-prone SF commander is tasked with retrieving a highly sensitive document that has been retrieved by SF soldiers. He arrives at an outpost that is commanded by an Engineer corps Corporal who is called sir by his men. SF commander screams said Corporal out for no particular reason. An SF sniper team - what is left of them - enters the outpost and delivers the sensitive document to the SF commander. A dumb Engineer soldier accidentally discharges his weapon. Our screamy SF commander then drops the sensitive document in the mud in order to scream-out the petrified soldier. That was all the ridiculous script writing I could bear. The cast actually seemed pretty good. Clearly there was no military advisor on set.

I only managed to watch this film as far as the point where the 'sniper team' emerge from the bush and casually meander across no man's land for a cryptic conversation with the special forces captain. Take careful note at 09.48 as the sniper hands his rifle to his spotter. A Remington M700? Or perhaps a Winchester 70? Er........ no. It's actually a break-open air rifle fitted with a very bent telescopic sight. Possibly the absolute worst example of production cost cutting I have ever seen. To be fair the spotter appears to be sufficiently embarrassed to attempt to cover the giveaway parts with his hand, but by then I was laughing so hard I fell out of my chair. Out of morbid curiosity I did fast-forward to see if it got any better. But it didn't. I just caught a brief snatch of conversation where Aaron Eckhart mutters 'It's a new kind of warfare'. He wasn't kidding!

I got a couple minutes into it and just knew that it was gonna be awful. Ie. Would a Full Bird Col. Salute and address a Capt. As sir? Would a Capt. Address a Corporal as sir? I think not. I picked up on quite a few things in the script that didn't fit the time period... ie. A scene where they were eating chow and they referred to MRE's.... They didn't come out until the mid 80's. Being a Marine Corps Veteran, it was easy to pick up on the mistakes in regards to terminology and military customs. Well, I can't get that 1 hour and 44 minutes of my life back :( I wish that I could go less than the 1 star.

I watched precisely 7.36 minutes of this garbage of a film, before enough was enough. When I saw Aaron Erkhart and Jonathan Rhys Meyers were cast, I mistakenly thought this is the film for me on a Friday night... oh how wrong I was! It starts with General Erkhart giving a pep talk to a SF captain to retrieve a highly classified "package", said SF captain walks out wearing his beret like a tea cozy, cut to shot of helicopter landing at a firebase, for the tea cozy wearing SF captain meeting a berating the commander of the firebase... that is a corporal. Yeah that was enough for me! A basic basic search for US army chain of command, pictures of uniforms of the era would have shown a minimum amount of realism, did they even have a military advisor and if they did, did they just not listen! Truly awful lack of research. If you're going to make a film set in real life scenario then research is key! I will never get those 7.36 minutes of my life back, don't waste any of yours on this rubbish!

The film begins in the middle of the action and the events building up to it are narrated to the audience over the course of a single dialogue exchange between the general and the captain. 10-15min invested on that through visuals would have definitely helped. Though the core plot of tunnel warfare is nothing new, the story nonetheless is not gripping. The screenplay is also equally lacking and at places especially toward the end, it falls apart failing to keep viewers on the edge. Even the editing at the end becomes wayward with unnecessary cuts that's immediately obvious. Acting is decent and its only the likes of Eckhart that impede this movie from becoming another forgettable B-Grade school project.