The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Faces of bravery
It has too many characters, but ‘The Outpost’ succeeds at taking you into harrowing 2009 fight with Taliban in Afghanistan
Were this a normal summer, director Rod Lurie’s new war film, “The Outpost.” would be opening in several theaters, not debuting in what’s expected to be a select few and then immediately being made available via video-on-demand platforms. It’s hard to say how many theaters “The Outpost” would have bowed in were the presence of the novel coronavirus not a reality — this is not a movie with a huge budget and from a powerhouse studio — but several theaters nonetheless. Understandably, the reality surrounding “The Outpost” is a disappointment to Lurie, a former U.S. Army officer (and film critic) whose credits include “The Contender” in 2000, 2001’s “The Last Castle” and “Straw Dogs” in 2011. Reviewers of “The Outpost” received a letter from Lurie calling it “a bit of a bummer” that we wouldn’t be viewing it as originally intended and imploring us to “replicate the theater experience as much as possible.” He asks for big-screen TVs and surround-sound systems, not computers and mobile devices, and that reviewers set their video resolution to at least 1080p. Hey, I completely get where he is coming from, and I was only too happy to oblige. I couldn’t, however. Instead of making “The Outpost” available for review via a streaming app that would work on, say, my Apple TV, the studio provided a basic link that would work on, you guessed it, computers and mobile devices. (And, disappointingly, the ability to send video from an Apple device to the TV via its AirPlay wireless protocol seems to have been disabled. Only sound from the film jumped to the TV.) All of this is to preface that even on a computer — albeit one hooked to a 27inch HD monitor and fairly stereo punchy speakers — “The Outpost” is the visceral, often-gripping experience Lurie designed it to be. The film is based on CNN journalist Jake Tapper’s 2012 nonfiction book “The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor.” The bestseller chronicles the ordeal of American soldiers who, while stationed in 2009 at the remote and vulnerable Combat Outpost Keating, near the town of Kamdesh of Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan, were attacked by hundreds of Taliban fighters. Lurie’s film begins with text that helps us understand just how vulnerable the post — initially called PRT Kamdesh and part of a 2006 Army initiative in Afghanistan to promote counterinsurgency by connecting with the locals — was. Surrounded by three mountains, it was nicknamed information by on-screen text, Lurie uses more of it to put names to some of the many faces that we encounter and continues to do so as characters are introduced throughout “The Outpost.” The closest he and writers Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson (“The Fighter”) come to actually developing a character is Jones’ Staff Sgt. Ty Carter, a former Marine frustrated by the “fratboy” antics of some of his fellow soldiers and struggling to connect with others. On the other hand, the filmmakers are successful in painting a broad portrait of life at the outpost, where bullets raining down on the men from attackers on the mountains seems to be an almost-daily occurrence. (At one point, a soldier is about to shower, but he instead grabs a rifle and helps to neutralize such a threat even though he’s naked.) That’s the first hour of “The Outpost.” Leaders come and go, and spirits are lifted by a plan to close up shop in the not-too-distant future. The second hour is consumed with the heartpounding battle, which begins with a horde of heavily armed Taliban coming over the mountain. The odds quickly are stacked against the American soldiers, some of whom find themselves pinned down at one location and eventually out of ammunition.
“Camp Custer.” Lurie then begins throwing characters at us. A lot of characters. Too many characters. In what appears to be an effort to honor the many men who fought in the Battle of Kamdesh, several of whom were injured or killed, he allows us to get to know only a few, and even those men not well. Top billing goes to Scott Eastwood (“Suicide Squad,” “Pacific Rim”), Caleb Landry Jones (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “Get Out”) and Orlando Bloom (the “Lord of The Rings” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchises), but this truly is an ensemble drama. After that initial bit of
Your eyes tell you Lurie didn’t have the budget for a parade of huge explosions and other highly expensive sequences. But he compensates with camera work that takes you into the action and succeeds at giving you at least a small sense of the danger the real men in the actual battle would have felt. Leave your cover to try to go on the offense or to rescue a comrade, and there’s a good chance bullets will find you. It’s harrowing stuff. Possibly as a result of having more to work with than other cast members, Jones gives the movie’s most interesting performance, saving some of his best work for the end. Even more of him would have been better Eastwood — son of Clint — is solid as Staff Sgt. Clint Romesha, a key figure in the fight. Conversely, as First Lt. Benjamin Keating, the British Bloom struggles with an accent that sounds as if it’s … maybe supposed to be Southern? (The real Keating grew up in Maine, so who knows.) That aside, you’ll wish you got a bit more time with this admirable character. By the end of the battle and “The Outpost,” you can put enough names to faces — and feel as if you’ve been through so much with them — that the obligatory photos and text about what honors were bestowed upon both those who survived the Battle of Kamdesh and those who didn’t are impactful. Watch “The Outpost” on the biggest screen you can, but if you’re interested in modern combat, just be sure to watch it.