Here’s your prescient reminder — war is hell through all the smoke and fire. And all hail Eastwood, clearly channelling his famous father when a bullet grazes his arm and he barely notices. Later, when the order comes to fall back, he growls: “No. Not tod
Based on a true story, The Outpost is a gruelling account of an Afghanistan battle
America has a long history of multi-generation military families and, more recently, of multi-generation performing ones as well. The two come together in The Outpost, a gritty, gruelling Afghanistan war film starring Scott Eastwood, with supporting work by Milo Gibson and James Jagger. Their dads are who you think they are.
The true story is based on the tale of Combat Outpost Keating, a small American base that was attacked and almost overrun by Taliban forces in 2009. As we see in an early scene, it was surrounded on three sides by steep mountains. Staff Sergeant Romesha, played by Eastwood in the movie, once likened it to “being in a fishbowl or fighting from the bottom of a paper cup.”
Rod Lurie directs from an adaptation of the book by journalist Jake Tapper, subtitled An Untold Story of American Valor.
THE OUTPOST
★★★1/2 out of 5
Cast: Scott Eastwood, Caleb Landry Jones, Orlando Bloom
Director: Rod Lurie
Duration: 2 h 3 m
Available: On demand
It’s a busy two hours — by the time we’re 10 minutes in, there’s already been the first of many skirmishes from the hills, and we’re still being introduced to characters.
They include Orlando Bloom as the officer whose sacrifice gives the base its name, and Caleb Landry Jones as Specialist Ty Carter, whose constant running with ammunition resupplies had me fearing that he’d be next to go. At one point, when someone asks what the resupply situation is, the answer is simple: “Everyone needs f---ing everything!”
The film is roughly divided in two, with the first half comprising well-shot if somewhat clichéd scenes of military life. There’s the meetings with local Afghan tribal elders, as the Americans try to win over hearts and minds. We see the soldiers ribbing each other with machismo one-upmanship. There’s the new commanding officer no one much likes. And every few minutes it seems there’s an attack from the hills. In one of them, a soldier using an outdoor shower has nothing on him but a bar of soap and a machine gun. At least it was a clean fight.
There’s precious little time to catch your breath in the early going, but do what you can because once the big battle starts there’s none at all. Kudos to Lurie for keeping things at least roughly understandable