12 STRONG

Cert Running time

Mount up for action with Chris Hemsworth in this impressively staged real-life war movie.

The Thor star saddles up as the leader of a dozen special forces soldiers who ride horseback into Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

It’s a covert operation, and with military intelligence being what it is, only one of them knows how to ride.

With a forward operating base nicknamed The Alamo, this is basically a Western in disguise, armed with automatic rifles.

They’re on a mission to assist a local warlord in taking a strategically important city and, in the grand tradition of General Custer, they find themselves outnumbered 5000-1 and facing missile launchers and tanks.

There are shades of Lawrence of Arabia as Hemsworth leads the locals’ charge into battle, but he’s no Peter O’Toole and Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig is certainly no David Lean. Though there are some bloodily effective action scenes, it never manages to gallop.