‘Mosul’ tells a tale of Iraqi heroism

A well-made but troublingly generic war film

IBy Jessica Kiang

n June 2014, the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to ISIS (also known as DAESH or the Islamic State). A jointforces campaign to reclaim it began two years later and ended with the re-establishment of Iraqi control of the devastated, decimated city in July 2017. Matthew Michael Carnahan (brother of Joe and screenwriter of “The Kingdom” and “Deepwater Horizon”) picks through the debris of that campaign of barely two years ago for his directorial debut, “Mosul”, a well-made but troublingly generic war-is-hell pulse-pounder that inevitably prompts the question: How recent is too recent when it comes to turning a theater of war into pure theater, pure Hollywood spectacle?

Part of what excited the filmmaking team behind “Mosul” was that it presented an opportunity to tell a story of Iraqi heroism, particularly at a time when the war in the region isn’t being covered as aggressively by Western media as before.

“The conflict has been taking place for a long time and it has affected so many people,” said Joe Russo. “We felt it would be valuable to look at this issue from a point of view that American audiences don’t often have access to. Maybe that will be valuable in helping us figure out how we can all move forward together.”

The past is supposed to be another country, but 2017 feels barely an exploding city block behind us. And most of us can probably still recall that part of the horror of the Mosul campaign, which was described in vivid detail in a 2017 New Yorker article by Luke Mogelson, was that the tactics of ISIS were such a disturbingly distinctive combination of ideological extremism and barbaric cruelty. But it’s as though Carnahan was energized not by the article’s unique, embedded perspective on what made this particular battle so extraordinary, but by the potential to map it to a familiar screenwriting pattern. So the action is telescoped into one single day, with a series of missions of escalating stakes, and the characters reduced/elevated to archetypes: the naive rookie; the ferocious team leader with a plan glinting in his gimlet eyes; the mistrustful grunt whose respect is only gradually earned; and the taciturn comrade who extends a tentative hand – or earbud – of friendship, only to be instantly, randomly killed.

This is, loosely speaking, the story of the Ninevah SWAT team, a renegade band of Mosul-based Iraqi soldiers who gained a reputation for ruthless effectiveness in the waning days of the Battle of Mosul, as the last of ISIS’ strongholds in the city were falling. Here played by Arabic actors – all of whom acquit themselves well, given the narrow confines of their characters as written – this ragtag squad of survivors is led by Major Jaseem (Suhail Dabbach, radiating Terence Stamp-ish charisma) and his second-in-command, Waleed (Is’haq Elias).

Mission

But their numbers are dwindling and so in the cacophonic confusion of the bloody, bruising opening scene, in which Henry Jackman’s regionally-inflected action score takes a backseat to ear-splitting explosions and gunfire, they recruit Kawa (Bilal Adam Bessa), a young Kurdish cop caught in the ambush that killed his policeman uncle.

Having now lost a family member to ISIS, Kawa is qualified to join Ninevah SWAT, though not trusted enough to know their actual mission. Instead, like an Iraqi version of the Charlie Sheen character in “Platoon”, Kawa learns the ropes on the go, and over the course of a single day of bribery, bartering, bullet-dodging and brutality, goes from trembling, hesitant ingenu to war-weary, seen-it-all diehard.

DP Mauro Fiore’s fervent, explosive handheld cinematography has undeniable visceral impact, as does Oscar-nominated Alfonso Cuaron collaborator Alex Rodriguez’ taut, capable editing. In Philip Ivey’s production design, the Morocco locations seamlessly double for war-ravaged Northern Iraq. But if the gritty, camo-and-clenched-jaw aesthetic is impeccably achieved, it is also well-established, especially in the first-person-shooter video games that the plot increasingly emulates in its take-the-base, find-the-sniper, secure-the-building mini-quests. There is even a far-off head shot that elicits a little puff of pink blood and brain matter, and you half-expect a score to pop up on screen.

An argument yields the insult that Iraq is barely even a country, formed by “a drunk British dilettante and some bureaucrats with bad maps” and there are antiKurdish comments directed at Kawa. But mostly, the screenplay is at such pains to make these men relatable that it glosses over cultural, religious or national differences, even at the expense of describing the enemy, who here, aside from the odd propaganda broadcast, could be any war-movie bad-guys: Nazis, Vietcong, al-Qaeda.

“We don’t talk about American intervention anymore, we’re past all that,” says Major Jaseem when Kawa wonders about calling in airstrikes, and that is a remarkable line to hear spoken by the Arabic star of an American movie produced by Joe and Anthony Russo, directors of two “Captain America” installments and the highest grossing film of all time. But “Mosul”, despite noble intentions, is still an example of American cultural intervention – outwardly respectful of Iraqi ownership of this particular war wound, but in structure and style still reasserting Hollywood storytelling’s stranglehold over how war narratives unfold on screen. It makes the film’s appeal broader, but also flatter and more generic, as though it were called “Mosul” not because it’s the definitive tale of one battle-scarred city, but because otherwise you could forget where it’s set.

The Russo Brothers are using the clout they earned from directing “Avengers: Endgame” and several other Marvel movies to get some interesting projects off the ground. Take “Mosul”, a jittery, intense thriller about an elite group of Iraqi soldiers facing off against ISIS in a bombed-out city. There’s little about the film, which relies on a cast of unknown actors, all of whom speak only Arabic, that screams blockbuster.

“We know it’s unconventional,” said Anthony Russo, who, along with his brother Joe Russo, produced “Mosul” through their company AGBO. “But we hope that the global cinema market is open to new ideas and excited by new ideas.

“Joe and I want to use the capital we’ve built up to help films like this find an audience and get made,” he added. (RTRS)